


As Seasons Shift

by midnightflame



Series: As Human as We Are [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Band, Confessions, Drunken Kissing, Graduate School, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Kissing, Lance (Voltron) Being Lance, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Music, Mutual Pining, Pining, Repression, references to other characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-23 06:10:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9643853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: Shiro has spent the majority of his life carefully cornering every bit of who he is into precise compartments built on expectations. And in the span of one year, he comes to find that truth will eventually unravel it all.





	1. Fall

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly never thought I would visit an AU again in this capacity, but here I am. This is meant to be something lighter compared to some of the other pieces I have written, though I suppose not all of it is carefree. If nothing else, something a bit more fun despite some of the themes underlying it though it has a bit of a heavier start. Music is a big part of this, which will play out more in the coming chapters.
> 
> And as for this chapter, try Jennifer Haines "The Storm Begins" as an accompanying piece.

“What’s that look for?”

Keith is sitting on the floor with his back against the baseboard of his bed and his knees tucked up with a rather imposing book (those ones thick with thin-slits of pages and print tiny and terrifying scrawled over them) balanced precariously across them. At his side, a bottle of Coke stands upright, its contents nearly drained, and over Keith’s face, Shiro can make out the unmistakable look of a man being crushed by some inner agony. His brow is knit tight as a Gordian knot, his eyes narrowed at the text that surely must have been screaming at him from the page – why else would Keith look so set on murder? 

All of it has Shiro laughing, soft and kind, as he settles himself down on the floor beside Keith, the one not occupied by the soda. It’s put him right between the nightstand, which is loaded with a scrambled mess of papers, music sheets and notebooks that has Shiro quietly lamenting over the mess, and Keith’s right side with very little room for maneuvering in between. His elbow kicks against Keith’s as he raises his hand from the abyss between them and starts to follow the line of Keith’s pencil across the page. 

“When you recommended Thace, I didn’t think I would get trapped reading Milton,” Keith mutters, giving Shiro a look of almost-accusation. _Almost_ because Shiro can tell Keith doesn’t really hate any part of this, not even Milton. 

“If this had been your first class with him, maybe I would apologize, but considering this is now your third, I think you did this to yourself.”

Keith lets loose a low sigh, followed by a begrudging smile. “Well, you were right when you said he was a great teacher.” 

Shiro tugs on the edge of the book, which Keith hands over with something like relief. 

“This is my copy, isn't it?” 

“Yeah. . .I know you said I could use it. . .”

“And I remember you insisting you wanted your own. . .”

“That was before I saw the price tag." Keith grimaces, his lips stringing tight and twisting with a pain Shiro finds all too relatable. He grows quiet for a moment, twirling the pencil between his fingers endlessly, a propeller taking him nowhere. “. . .And before I saw your handwriting all over the pages. . .”

The corners of Shiro’s mouth twitch but don’t fully curve as he begins flipping through the pages. “I thought my handwriting would be a detriment. I’m surprised you can even read it.”

“I’ve had like ten years to get used to it.” Shiro can hear the smile in Keith’s voice. “I’m probably a full-fledged expert in it now.”

“As sad as it is, that won’t help you with any job prospects, but -” He pauses, finally letting his mouth curve in full. “ – it may help you in Thace’s class.”

Shiro’s eyes continue to run down the pages, hopping from one underlined piece of text to another, and as the silence settles in, Keith leans in closer, putting the skip into his heart’s rhythm. He swallows quietly, turns another page. Suddenly, Keith’s hand is up, fingers tracing over several lines, and he turns his gaze up at Shiro, eyes full of questions Shiro isn’t sure he wants to answer.

“Thace said you wrote your paper on these. . .”

Shiro can only nod, numb, with the breath thick in his chest and his eyes locked on Keith’s. And he wonders if it might not be better to turn to stone than to sit here, trapped with a heartbeat that cannot seem to find a proper pace for supporting a right and reasonable life. 

“Yeah. . .we had to choose something. . .”

And just like that, Keith turns his gaze away from him, leaving him with an emptied sort of freedom. Shiro breathes in.

Keith presses on. “The mind is its own place, and in it self -“

“Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. . .” Shiro follows from memory, the smile once more tugging on his lips, its curve gentle and heavy as a requiem. 

“Here at least we shall be free.”

Shiro laughs a little. “That’s not the next line.”

“No, but I like it,” Keith murmurs as he shifts, letting his shoulder fall with all his body’s weight against Shiro’s. “He almost makes hell sound good.”

“Turning him into some Byronic hero now, are you?”

“Ulaz asked me the same thing.” And this time, Keith is the one laughing, and it is soft and open and heart-wrenchingly beautiful. “And then he went into this long explanation of it all. I think I ended up stuck in his office for thirty minutes longer than I was supposed to be.”

There is nothing on Keith’s face that tells Shiro he had despised any minute of it. He sees only the faint bit of affection putting the warmth in his eyes, along with the pride Keith had cultivated for himself over the years, encouraged by things beyond just his talent and natural intelligence. What Shiro sees is enough to put the ache into his very breath and make him grateful for it despite the pain. Because there has never been anything more stunning than watching Keith come into his own. 

“If you give Ulaz the time, he’ll always make it worth your while. Whether you wanted him to do that or not,” Shiro finally replies, giving Keith’s shoulder a slight shove with his own. “What did he say about everything else?”

“It’s good! I mean. . .everything is coming along. I’m going to have to sit down with him again and sort out things for my senior year. . .”

“Your thesis?”

“Yeah. . .I wanted to maybe work on something with music. Since it’s pretty much –“ Keith pauses, mouth pursing for a moment as he works to sort out his thoughts. “Lyrics are pretty much just poetry, right?”

Shiro chuckles quietly. “You could say that. . .I’m sure Ulaz would be thrilled to help you figure something out.”

Keith nods, falling silent. His gaze drops to the textbook, sitting patient over Shiro’s palms like some prehistoric butterfly, large and startling but posing no honest threat. Shiro, however, keeps his eyes trained on Keith, waiting for the follow-up he knows is brewing on Keith’s tongue. Seconds later, he’s not disappointed.

“Ulaz said you stopped by the other day. You still talk to him?”

Shiro slides the used movie ticket Keith had been using as a marker between the pages and sets the book aside. “I ran into him coming back from one of my lectures. Since I had some time, I accepted his offer and we got to talking a little bit.”

“Was it tea?”

“Yeah. I think he’s switched over to Earl Grey now.”

“Lady Grey, actually,” Keith corrects with this small slip of a smile stealing over his lips. “I got a whole fifteen minutes on it two weeks ago.”

Shiro tips his head back against the mattress, laughing more to himself than anything else and idly noting that Keith’s bed is no better than his nightstand, with music sheets half strung with notes and its bedsheets rumpled and his comforter practically lost to the floor. But the bed smells clean, a bit like Keith himself with faint traces of the lavender that infuses their dryer sheets, and Shiro lets his eyes fall shut and his heart run rampant.

“Whether it’s tea or music or some buried poem from the fifteenth century, I’m pretty sure Ulaz can enlighten anyone on the topic.”

“So, what was it you talked to him about then?” 

Caution sits within Keith’s voice, the quietly curious kind of caution that takes over when the heart is dying to know and the mind is suggesting putting better reason to work. Shiro can hear it plainly, has heard it so many times before, and it has him reaching out to set his hand atop Keith’s head, to let fingers tumble through the dark locks, reassuring. 

“He asked me if I had been playing recently. . .” Shiro starts, eyelids continuing to shutter out the rest of the world. Leaving him in the dark, with the soft tussle of Keith’s hair beneath his fingertips and the quiet barely held breaths washing over his lips. He doesn’t bother giving the answer, for they both know it and there is simply no point in dragging that particular point up just now.

“Then he said – “ And here, Shiro can hear in full the quiet unrelenting cadence of Ulaz’s words, his voice carrying all the clarity of a star-studded night, moonless, cloudless, but impossibly full of light. “ – _Music is the pulse of a song, it’s very heart. And anything that gets layered over that – the lyrics, a voice – only amplifies that. But never forget what beats beneath, and how a single note left hanging can tear right into you_. . .”

Keith has gone still beside him. Shiro can feel it right down to his bones the impact that Ulaz’s words carried because it had done the same thing to him as he had sat there in Ulaz’s office, a cup of lady grey tea cooling on the edge of the desk and sunlight cascading down the bookshelf to his left. 

“He told me I should pass that on to you,” Shiro breathes out after another moment. When he opens his eyes, it’s to the white-out of Keith’s ceiling above them, familiar in the way it echoes his own. Beside him Keith finally stirs. 

“You should play again, Shiro,” he murmurs. “More, I mean. . .”

“Ulaz offered me the practice room when it’s not in use.” It’s a small concession, but one that brings the warmth of Keith’s weight back against his side. “So maybe, when school isn’t eating me alive. . .”

Keith nods, his fingers lacing and re-lacing themselves together in the space between his knees. When Shiro looks over, he notes again the furrow between Keith’s eyebrows, the look burning bright with all the unspoken in his eyes, and he realizes that maybe Milton hadn’t been the one to blame for everything he had walked in on earlier. He says nothing though, instead letting Keith process what he needs to and waiting as he has come to learn to do best.

But when the words strike the air, Shiro isn’t sure he’s ready for them. 

“Did you know. . .” Keith asks, his gaze fixed on his fingers as their pace starts to slow, “. . .about Thace and Ulaz?”

Shiro feels everything within him slam to a halt, jarring his thoughts and putting a rattle in his brain. 

“What are you asking exactly, Keith?”

He gives a slight shrug, still focused on his hands. “I just heard some kids talking, saying how it was kinda fucked up, and maybe that’s why we were studying this. . .”

“Paradise Lost is considered a classic epic poem. Of course, it’s going to be taught, especially in an upper level class. . .”

Even in the truth of his words, however, Shiro can hear how hollow they ring. The movements of Keith’s hands come to a complete standstill.

“They started joking about which one of them did what. They couldn’t even take the class seriously because of it. . .”

“Keith. . .”

“. . .and hell is the perfect place for –“

“ _Keith_. Enough.”

“Shiro. . .” Keith is looking up at him now, eyes dark with muffled misery, and just like a note left hanging, Shiro can feel it cutting right into him. Sharp and devastating as a tiger’s claw. “. . .did you know?”

He exhales, the sound drawn out and shaking as it flows over his lips. “I just assumed given some things between them. I never asked. . .”

“Does it bother you?”

“Would I have ever recommended Thace to you if I thought there was something wrong with anything he did?”

Keith shakes his head, and there are tears burning along his lashes, small fragile little specks of them bright against the dark of his eyes. Shiro reaches out, letting his arm curve around Keith’s head and drawing it against his shoulder.

“Thace is a great teacher, and Ulaz is a wonderful advisor. What they said isn’t a reflection of either Thace or Ulaz. It only tells you about those kids. . .and if they can’t see the brilliance of either of those men, then they are the ones at a loss. Not Thace. Not Ulaz. . . not you.”

Keith’s hand balls itself within Shiro’s T-shirt, a gesture that makes Shiro certain it is possible to shatter in one place and still remain standing even as he knows he will have to go looking for all the shards of himself scattered across the floor of all that he is. He sets his chin atop Keith’s head and exhales.

“Have you enjoyed the time you spent with them?”

Shiro can feel Keith nodding beneath him, and it brings a fragile smile to his lips.

“Have you learned something from them?”

Another small nod.

“Then that is all that matters.”

*

“Keith. . .if I don’t make it. . .”

“Before you go any further with that – “ Keith starts as he sets a stack of papers on the end of Shiro’s desk,” – you said the exact same thing two weeks ago during midterms, and you said it last spring during finals, and clearly you haven’t died. So, you’re not entrusting your _anything_ to me.”

Shiro looks up from where his head had been buried against his forearms and warily eyes the stack looming amidst the cityscape of papers, exams, and lab worksheets sprawled across his desk. 

“Besides, I haven’t given you permission to die yet,” Keith continues with a smile almost gloating, as he places a tall white cup directly in front of Shiro. “So, you’ll just have to continue suffering through it all.”

Unfurling his arms, Shiro reaches out for the cup and wraps his hands around it, a sigh leaving his lips as the warmth permeates his fingertips. “You are a godsend. . .”

The smile that blossoms over Keith’s lips might as well have been heavensent too, and it has Shiro sinking into the acceptance of his life in this moment with no further complaints. 

“Pidge sent me an order for you as well, Hunk. She said something about kickstarting neurons or powering some sort of cell. . .I don’t know. I didn’t get it really, but I have coffee for you too.”

Keith waves another cup in the air, and a head emerges from behind a decidedly taller and far more precariously piled stack of papers standing on the adjacent desk. 

“Don’t ask me how she knew you would be here. . .”

Hunk offers a small grin as he reaches for the cup. “I may have told her I was hiding in the TA lounge with Shiro. . .”

“Pretty sure he’s consoling himself with my misery,” Shiro mutters from behind his cup. 

Hunk smiles over at Shiro, entirely apologetic. “Sometimes, you have to take one for the team. Getting made Slav’s assistant is exactly that. . .and sometimes, when the entirety of your engineering curriculum is trying to convince you death may be a better option, reminding yourself that life could actually get worse puts things into perspective.”

Shiro groans. Keith tries to suppress his laughter, which only earns him a weak glare from Shiro, which in turn sets Keith off in full. 

“So, think of it this way, you’re saving lives, Shiro!” Hunk grins at him as he leans back in his chair with a solid squeak. 

“That. . .doesn’t help me at all.”

“I made madeleines if that helps instead?” Hunk offers over the top of his coffee cup.

“No, I’m just going to figure out if it’s physically possible to drown in a medium-sized coffee cup instead. . .” 

“Before or after you grade Slav’s exams?” Keith asks, with a smile far too amused spread over his lips. The look alone makes Shiro feel a whole hell of a lot better about his prospects for life than his current academic situation tends to make him believe.

“Which will hurt less?”

“After. Slav might actually find some alternate reality where he can come and berate you for not doing your job. . .” Hunk says around a mouthful of cake. 

“And you don’t get to die yet anyway. You promised to come out for Halloween tonight. . .” 

“That’s tonight, isn’t it?” Shiro pops off the lid to his coffee, recoiling with a slight grimace when steam hits the air and threatens to singe his nose. “What time am I supposed to meet Nyma?”

Keith steps around to where Shiro is seated, holding a small neon purple Post-It note out to him. “She said to stop by the dorm around 7. . .”

But Shiro hears only static, the reception to logic and reason blocked spectacularly and leaving him with only a buzzing in his head and a hammer taking to his heart. “You used my. . .”

Red lights up Keith’s cheeks then, quick as a starshot across the sky and blazing like dawn hot on its heels. He jumps back, a hand flying to the back of his neck, like it might somehow help smooth over his embarrassment with each pass of his fingertips over his hair.

“Yeah. . .I ran out of my stuff and I didn’t realize it until I was already in the shower this morning.” Keith shifts from one foot to the other. “Was I not supposed to?”

Shiro shakes his head, quick and far too certain. He lifts his hand and waves it through the air, inadvertently sending the scent of coffee wafting upwards and jolting his sense of smell further awake. 

“No, no. . it’s fine! Don’t worry about it, Keith. . .” His voice sounds foreign, this distant cry of normalcy coming from the edges of the earth. “Just. . .remind me tomorrow that we need to go to the store. . .”

Keith simply nods, his brow knitted together and confusion swimming in his gaze. 

“But yeah, tell Nyma I’ll be there, okay?” 

A smile finally peeks out of the corner of Keith’s mouth. “All right. I’ll see you tonight then. . .” He turns and gives Hunk a short wave. “You too.”

“Sure thing. See you later, man! ” Hunk answers, waving in return with a smile bright enough to chase the shadows from the room. But as soon as the door shuts behind Keith, his entire expression falls flatter than a dried out mango slice, with just the same amount of tartness to it. “ _Seriously_?”

Shiro has his forehead pressed against the surface of his desk, eyes screwed shut and a stream of curses filtering over his lips. 

“Yeah, you’re just about that messed up,” Hunk agrees. 

“You don’t even know what I’m saying. . .” Shiro mutters. Someone might as well have just cut a hole into his heart for all that he feels bleeding out of him at this moment. 

“Yeah, but I know whenever you start muttering in Japanese you’re feeling a level of well. . .as Lance would put it _fucked up_ nothing else can compare to.”

A groan cuts its way up Shiro’s throat. 

The chair beside him squeaks again as Hunk rolls himself over, and seconds later, a small plastic container is held out just under his desk. 

“Madeleine?”

Shiro turns his head so he can set at least one eye on Hunk. “How is that going to help?”

Hunk shrugs. “Don’t know, but I put orange in them this time. Citrus brightens up everything. It’s like the happy in life. . .”

Shiro breathes out, wondering how long it would actually take a man to bleed out from the wounds no one can see. Hunk jostles the container again, and this time Shiro reaches out and pops one of the small cakes into his mouth.

“Keith has no idea, does he?”

Shiro shakes his head as he rolls himself up and sinks back into his chair, his head left to hang over the top edge of it. His eyes scour the ceiling, a dull soul-draining grey of a color.

“Those are actually really good. . .”

When Hunk starts laughing, Shiro ends up falling into it as well. Because yes, he is just that level of fucked up, and yes, Hunk had just witnessed it all, and yes, just like coffee and shower-steeped skin, orange can in fact stimulate the senses.

*

The bar Shiro finds himself in later is actually an old Southern-style house revamped, with the living and dining rooms turned into a dance floor and the kitchen made into a sprawling bar, backlit in orange for the holiday and fake cobwebs crawling over every potential corner they can reach. The stench of beer and sweat is already clogging the place, which he is more than happy to vacate for the backyard, where there are several small table-top firepits, red brick encircling them and making for the perfect place to set your drinks.

“I didn’t think Lance would actually convince Allura to play along with him. . .” 

Keith hands him a glass, and with one quick sniff, Shiro can tell it's his usual fare - Jack and Coke. He takes the first sip with a gratifying sigh. 

“Lance insists he had her at _cara mia_ ,” Keith says over the rim of his own drink. “But Allura says it wasn’t worth diving into abject stupidity, and if anyone could make Morticia look good, she could.”

Shiro gives a quiet chuckle at that. “Fair point.”

And she does, if you ask any number of people sliding their way through the crowd for inevitably their eyes land on the tall siren of darkness that Allura has made of herself. She waves over at the table as her gaze catches Shiro’s, before turning back to Lance and calling out her drink order. A look of frustration works its way over her mouth as he blinks at her, shoulders rising in question, and with hands up in defeat, she climbs up the three steps of the outdoor patio to where he’s standing at the second bar built into the house. 

“Nyma did a good job.” Keith motions over Shiro’s body with his index finger. 

Shiro glances down then back up, offering a small but pleased smile. “Well, I said grad school made me feel like the living dead and she pulled through on her end of the deal. It only cost me ten packages of orange Peeps.”

“You said you had to search through eight different stores for that. . .”

“Yeah,” Shiro muses, the sound dragging out with a slightly forlorn edge to it. He sets his forearms against the brick top and leans into them, his gaze lingering on the fire, his right hand curled around his cup. “I couldn’t understand why she would make that request until I realized how damn hard it was to locate all of them. . .”

“What did she want them for?”

Shiro shrugs. “Something about an order she needed to fulfill. . .I’m not quite sure, and I’d rather not know honestly.”

Keith laughs as he settles in alongside Shiro. “You probably have the right idea on that.”

“You think?” Shiro says as he nudges Keith with his hip. “I see you found a pair of sunglasses that suited you.”

“Couldn’t be a would-be Lost Boy without them,” Keith answers before taking a sip of his drink, which Shiro has determined to be either the same as his own or maybe something like rum and Coke instead. Before he can ask, Lance is weaving his way back through the crowd with Allura on his heels and far too many shots held between them.

Shiro eyes the handful of liquor as each shot glass is set down over the bricks, eyebrow lifting when Lance spreads his hands before him, proud of what Shiro can only guess is his best effort at trying to get half the bar plastered before midnight. 

“I see you finally decided to grace us with your presence,” Lance starts as he begins passing out the glasses. “And looking only a smidge better than your usual half-dead self.”

“Thanks, Lance,” Shiro answers dryly. “The pencil mustache really suits you. . .”

“I know, right? Damn my sexy self for rocking every look I try. . .”

“ _What_ is this?” Keith interrupts, poking at the shot glass before him like some science experiment set to go wrong. 

“That, my would-be-should-be vampire friend, is. . .something. . .I’m not sure.” Lance waves his hand in the air, as if to magically shoo the drink into Keith’s mouth. No further comments needed. “It was on the specials menu. All I know is it’s marshmallowy goodness and this is Halloween so you all are going to hell with me. . .”

“There are six drinks here,” Shiro points out with that inevitable sinking feeling that always strikes a man when someone else's reality collides with his own. Like when they pull the blindfold off and you realize you're standing before a firing squad and all that's left is to wait for the first shot and hope it hits your heart. 

“Yeah. About that,” Lance leans in over the bricks, inches away from the fire. “See, I’m pretty sure Hunk and Pidge were here earlier. . .”

“Pidge said something about seeing Bill Nye and insisted on taking off after him,” Keith supplies, studying the extra two shots with something like hopelessness in his gaze. 

“Ah, that. . .explains a lot,” Lance murmurs. “Assuming Chef Boyardee took after her then, thus leaving us short two drinking contestants. . .”

He pauses, humming a quiet bit of tango to himself. His gaze drifts between the six shots, one after the other, like some unfortunate game of Russian roulette. After a moment, Lance picks up one of the glasses, pinching it between thumb and index finger. 

“Allura, querida. . .”

“Oh, don’t you _querida_ me,” she mutters, narrowing her eyes down at him over her beer bottle. “I already told you it was a stupid idea to get them in the first place, but since when do you ever listen to me?”

“It’s only because I love the way you tear into me afterward.”

“Pervert.” 

“Aficionado of pain, Mi Amor,” Lance retorts with his best love-struck smile, mimicking a chill coursing down his spine. Seconds later, he’s bringing the shot across the table, just skirting the flicker of flames, and hovering it between Shiro and Keith. “And since you just got here, Shiro, I think you need to do us the honor. . .”

“No. . .no. . .” Shiro is shaking his head like it might save him from what’s to come. “I’m already half-dead, and I certainly don’t feel like digging my own grave. . .”

“Actually,” Keith says, reaching over to relieve Shiro of his current drink, “Lance is right for once. You were already an hour late. . .”

Shiro is left speechless. Not because he can’t think of any proper response to that, because he had a perfectly valid reason for being late which involved letting his make-up set properly according to Nyma, but because Keith has decided to abandon his own drink and now has Shiro’s glass pressed against his lower lip with this terrible curve of a smile pulling at his mouth. And as Shiro watches Keith's mouth close down over the rim of his cup, watches the first bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows the contents down slow and steady, he swears he’s on the more horrific end of living than the better part of being dead. 

Keith wags the empty cup before Shiro, the sound of ice settling over one another ringing in his head. 

“Drink up, Shiro. . .”

And there is only mischief and mayhem glinting in Keith’s gaze, and it puts the hollow right back into Shiro’s heart. He breathes in, measured by the half-seconds, before staring down the two shots now sitting before him. 

_Hail horrours, hail infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell receive thy new possessor_.

“Are you sure you’re not a devil?” Shiro asks, smile cutting tight across his lips.

“Pretty sure,” Keith answers, settling once more shoulder-to-shoulder beside Shiro. “Actually, Michael wasn’t even a fully fledged vampire. . .”

“Ooooh, that’s right!” Lance chimes in from across the table. “Maybe Keith should be the one drinking something instead. . .what do you think, Shiro?”

“I’m fairly certain the living dead has nothing worth sucking,” Shiro murmurs, as his heartbeat decrescendos and his thoughts resettle into something more. . .reasonable. Only, everything has fallen eerily silent around him, that is until Lance starts cackling with unrestrained amusement. Beside him, Keith is glancing off to the side, the firelight casting a reddish glow to his cheeks, and Shiro is left blinking, completely unbalanced.

“You know. . .it’s almost adorable how you can say things like that in full seriousness, Shiro,” Lance manages to squeeze out around his laughter. “It’s so perfectly cute and so _you_.”

For one heart-shuddering moment, Shiro thinks the earth has fallen out beneath him, and all his thoughts are tumbling down the rabbit’s hole and maybe, just maybe, he’ll wake up in some place that isn’t Wonderland instead. He reaches out for one of the shot glasses, and holding it briefly aloft before them all, he mutters a hard _bottom’s up_ before tossing it back.

And as the burst of liquor scalds its way down his throat, marshmallow in taste but having none of its smoothness, his gaze meets Keith’s and Shiro can only find himself mesmerized by the way the fire burns brightest in the depths of his eyes.


	2. Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway through! As promised there's a bit more music involved in this part, so to help with that: for Shiro's piece, I recommend checking out "Divenire" by Ludovico Einaudi (the orchestrated version is more commonly found, but there is also a piano only one and several others have nice takes on it including Chris Snelling and Lorenzo de Luca), and as for Keith, I did say back when I wrapped up the Homecoming series I wasn't done with Starset yet, so the cover he is singing is from their new album and is called "Telepathic". So basically I get to revisit song fic in all its glory and I probably should be apologizing for this. 
> 
> Regardless, I hope you all enjoy this next chapter!

Shiro finds Keith standing next to the piano, a small chamois cloth in his right hand as the fingertips of his left drift over several keys. Producing no sound but defining a song nonetheless. The piano’s cover had been folded neatly and set off to the side on a chaise lounge tucked up against the far wall. Shiro casts his gaze around the room, noting how little has changed since the summer and chiding himself for thinking that anything would have given the circumstances. 

The room itself had once been designated a solarium of sorts, though only one set of walls was completely made of glass, but once the piano had moved in, it had been converted to a place for music instead. To his left, a low cabinet sits, stocked with various pieces of sheet music, an old record player centered over its top, the records encased below in alphabetical order. Next to the chaise lounge, a newer audio system stands silent, and beside that, a bookshelf loaded with CDs and biographies of various composers. 

Everything is steeped in shadow, though Keith must have pulled back the curtains when he had entered, letting moonlight trickle in cold and clear. It puts an otherworldly sparkle to the snow sitting almost a foot deep just outside, to the black lacquer finish of the piano that all but glows now. All of it reminds Shiro of a siren’s call, drawing some part of him in relentlessly and with potentially devastating results. 

He takes another step into the room, and as the floorboard creaks in protest, Keith finally turns around, his hand withdrawing from the keys with all the swiftness of one realizing he had just been courting a cobra’s bite.

“What did your dad have to say?”

Shiro smiles slightly, more rote motion than some genuine spark of emotion. “The usual. Things are fine back in Japan. I told him about my grades. . .settled out finances for the spring semester. Let him know the house here was still standing.”

Keith steps over to the cabinet, wiping at the dark wood with the cloth before setting it beside the record player. 

“Are they still planning on selling it?”

“No, actually,” Shiro answers, quietly baffled still over that part of the conversation. “Not any time soon, at least.”

When Shiro looks over, Keith is smiling at him, eyes lit just like the moon-gilded snow outside. Bright and pure in his excitement. This time the smile that claims Shiro’s lips is honest-born.

“So, yes, we get to keep coming here on our breaks for the time being. . .”

It had been a barely touched upon subject during the two-hour-plus car ride from campus, with Keith having fallen asleep shortly after Shiro had given him a plethora of _I’m not quite sure_ ’s. That seemed to be forming a solid mantra for his life lately. 

Keith walks back over to the piano, hitting a C-note with enough force that it resonates solidly throughout the room. 

“You didn’t talk very long. . .”

Shiro exhales quietly, swallowing the last few steps between where he stood and where Keith was waiting. 

“No shorter than usual,” Shiro replies as he reaches out and spreads a hand out over the keys. 

Beside him, he can hear Keith inhale sharply, can imagine the look in his eyes as he watches Shiro’s hand slide across the piano, conjuring up a phantom song. Keith takes a step closer, his shadow staining the white of the keys grey, and before the words can leave his lips, Shiro is skirting around the bench and sitting down. Just like the ghost notes hanging in the air between them, Shiro can hear the things Keith wants to ask, and in knowing that, already has an answer set. 

A smile starts to form over his lips as his fingers press against the keys, light at first, the notes fragile but tenacious. Everything in him moves at the sound, the song so deeply ingrained that it takes nothing of thought to spur him into action. Just a simple spark of memory to send his fingers coursing over the keys. And he can feel it, slow and simple, this unwinding of all that he is, and when Keith settles in beside him on the bench, everything releases with a short puff of breath, measured and weighed and terribly wanting. 

His fingers slow as the song hovers over a quiet uncertainty right in the middle, the space in which a soul might come to find itself, and then it picks up again, this undercurrent of notes deeper and more structured supporting the more threadbare ones of before until all melds once more into one perfect collaboration. As the song weaves its way towards its end, tempo picking up, Shiro lets his eyes fall shut, lets the sound of Keith’s soft breaths interweave with the promising cascade of notes, lets himself drown without remorse in all of it. 

As the last note hits, Keith exhales heavily beside him. Shiro smiles, lost to the dark behind his eyelids and the warmth of the body beside him, burning bright in the chill of the room.

“I still remember the look on your face when you found me that day,” Shiro starts, his voice low, throat feeling dry and cracked. “And I remember thinking how amazing this piece must have been to have drawn in someone like you. . .”

Keith breathes out again, shaky, and reaches out to place his hand over the keys, echoing the last few notes.

“And you sat me down without asking anything and showed me how to play it,” Keith murmurs, the bare hint of a laugh in his words. “That day, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Everything had felt so wrong. . .and then I heard the piano. Next thing I knew, I was standing in the room listening.”

“And every day I was there practicing, and every day you would find me.” 

Shiro sets his left hand upon the keys once more, opposite of the right hand Keith already had over them, and slowly starts the song up once again. A languid version, as if learning it note-by-note all over again, as if the rest of the world no longer had to exist because everything that meant anything was contained right here. 

“I. . .love this song, Shiro,” Keith whispers. And in the silence that ensues, Shiro can feel his heart stumble, its beat going erratic, this livewire of a pulse shocking everything it touches. “It makes me think there is hope worth pursuing.” 

Shiro swallows hard after a moment, his gaze carefully trained on the movements of his fingers. 

“Is that why you were so insistent on me coming with you that day?”

Keith’s fingers still over the keys. And then, he is laughing, this soft genuine sound that has Shiro smiling despite everything. He turns over his right hand, exposing the underside of his wrist to the moonlight and as Shiro’s eyes alight upon the music notes tattooed over the skin there, he echoes them across the piano.

“They were the very first ones you played for me,” Keith says, the laugh still flush and free within his voice. “Kol was so pissed when you brought me back. . .”

“He didn’t seem that angry in the end.”

“Only because it was you.” Keith replies, reaching out for Shiro’s right hand. “ _If Shirogane saw no problem with it, then it can’t be that bad_. . .”

“He really said that?” Shiro asks, eyes focusing in on the way Keith’s fingers start to trace the silvery-pink line of a scar. 

“Yeah. . .” Keith murmurs, head bobbing slightly. “I think he liked you. . .in his own way. . .Or at least thought you were a good influence.”

“How fortunate for me.” Shiro can barely hear his words, his reply lost to the thunder in his chest.

Keith’s fingers continue to move along the scar, skating over the top curve of his wrist, following it up along the outer edge of his forearm until it disappears beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his buttondown shirt. He taps his index finger lightly against the scar’s last visible point.

“When your parents took you back to Japan. . .after everything. . .I didn’t know what to do with myself,” Keith begins, quiet and solemn. Shiro doesn’t dare look at him, instead choosing to keep his gaze on the scars putting fault lines across his skin. “A year had never felt so long. . .”

Shiro exhales, a quiet quake of a sound. “I told you I would come back. . .”

Keith shakes his head. He brings his left hand up, and setting his right wrist against Shiro’s, exposing the tattoo once more, begins brushing his left thumb across the ink stamped there. 

“You said that, and then I heard nothing. Not until you showed up here one day, just like that. . .”

Everything shakes down inside of him, and Shiro wonders how the world can be so perfectly still around him when every bit of it locked within him is nothing more than a massive mess. 

“I had to sort out some things. . .” Shiro offers as explanation, knowing it will amount to nothing, like it always has. And like always, he knows Keith will accept it with that look that says he sees far deeper into the darkness than Shiro could ever imagine. “But once they were settled, I made it back. And now I’m here. . .”

Keith nods this time. “Don’t disappear, Shiro.”

Something cracks, sharp and painful, right in the center of his chest. His heart stops, the breath held until it sears his lungs. And as he exhales, Shiro slowly rotates his right wrist and curls his fingers around Keith’s hand.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

*

Everything is a blur of activity around them, with the blare of a band, drums crashing and voice muffled by the walls, serving as background noise. People are constantly cutting through the room, which is just off the left wing of the stage, calling out for one person or another, directing and redirecting traffic like some disconsonant beehive, and in the midst of it all, Shiro is on the edge of a couch that has seen far better days with Keith sitting on a small faux-wood coffee table, littered with magazines more than a year old.

“Tell me why I’m in here doing this again,” Shiro asks, briefly glancing up from his current project and catching the scowl that twists Keith’s mouth.

“Because, Shiro,” Lance answers, giving Keith no opportunity to put into words everything that his mouth is currently trying to express, “there is something called _aesthetics_ , and I am not putting out the lead singer of our Legendary Defenders without a little flash of that for the crowd.”

Shiro gives a long and thoroughly unconvinced hum over that. His fingers slip along the length of Keith’s ring finger, letting it hang in the air as he moves to pick up his middle finger next. 

“So, am I supposed to be painting all of these black. . .?”

“Oh my God, Shiro,” Lance moans as he slides down further over the couch, all molten rock in his flow, his head now hanging over the cushions and his legs stretched out over the backrest. “Everything is black except for the ring finger. . .”

Shiro feels his mouth purse as Keith groans. 

“Then. . .?” A smile, small but sheepish, follows in the wake of that as Shiro holds up Keith’s hand.

“In all my years of knowing you, not once did I ever think I would utter these words,” Lance sighs, one eyebrow delicately arched as he examines Keith’s fingernails, “but I am so disappointed in your work, Shiro.” 

A pause sets in, brief and pointed. “Make it his index finger then. . .You may redeem yourself now.”

“Thanks. . .?” Shiro replies, words confusion-tinged. 

Keith simply shrugs, letting his chin sink into his opposite palm, elbow digging into his thigh.

“Aesthetic, huh?” Shiro can’t help but smile over at Keith, commiserating, eyes meeting with one quick glance before he is motioning for Keith’s hand once more. His fingertips brush lightly against Keith’s wrist, smoothing absentmindedly over the tattoo. Instead of extending his next finger, Keith keeps them curled lightly against his palm, just enough to avoid smudging the polish already laid down, and when Shiro looks back up, there is something dark as a midnight storm brewing in Keith’s eyes. 

A cymbal crashes to the ground behind them, followed by a stream of curses, but Keith doesn’t move. Neither does Shiro’s heart, caught impossibly between breaths and that look lightning-struck in the blue-grey staring down at him.

“Your fingers, Keith,” Shiro murmurs, his voice catching in his throat. He huffs out softly, an attempt to dislodge his thoughts, and finding them stuck, licks at his lower lip, unable to tear his gaze away. “If you want them to dry before you take the stage. . .”

And just like that, everything is undone. Keith is looking off to the side, warning Lance not to fall off the couch as his fingers unfurl, and Shiro remembers that he still needs to breathe in order to live. Remembers how crisp and cool the air becomes when a storm departs, leaving everything behind drenched and strangely renewed.

*

“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to make it.”

Hunk squeezes his way past several people then slides in next to Shiro, setting his back against the wall with a long sigh. “Allura forgot her backup pair of sticks at the apartment so I offered to get them.”

“So, that’s why I didn’t see her when I was backstage. . .”

“Yep. Heard you got stuck on nail-painting duty?”

Shiro falls quiet for a moment, his gaze lingering on the stage where Keith has his hand wrapped around the microphone stand, his lips almost brushing against its grille as the lyrics fall from his lips, smooth and melodic. Even from where he stands, he can make out the black and red across Keith’s fingernails. 

“Lance insisted on it,” Shiro finally replies, folding his arms across his chest. “How’s Pidge doing?”

Hunk grimaces slightly, shoulders dropping a few centimeters. “Better now, I think.”

Tipping his head to the side, Shiro lifts an eyebrow in question. Around them the crowd swells with noise as Keith’s voice dies down and the music flows into one of the band’s interludes. 

“I. . .maybe thought today would be an awesome day to try some real Sichuan cooking and she maybe accused me of trying to improve upon death.”

Shiro barely stifles the laugh that tries to burst over his tongue. “Ouch?”

Another sigh falls from Hunk’s lips, this one heavy and suffering. He looks genuinely conflicted over the whole ordeal, which almost has Shiro feeling sorry for the laugh that had threatened in the first place. 

“Yeah. Apparently it was a toss up between that and burning at the stake. . .I thought it tasted pretty good though.”

And that is the end of it for Shiro, who finally lets himself fall prey to laughter as he sets his head back against the wall. Even Hunk starts to chuckle beside him, forgiving it all. 

“So, how did you make it up to her?” Shiro asks, a smile lingering on his lips as his eyes catch sight of Keith once more stepping up to the microphone.

“Oh, that was easy enough. Just brought her some cream puffs and that seemed to do the trick. Something about glucose and brain food. I didn’t bother with the details but she seemed happy enough.”

But it’s Hunk who looks beyond satisfied to Shiro, his gaze falling to where Pidge stands upon the stage, her fingers flying over the keyboard standing tall before her. Her movements are quick and precise, and Hunk starts to nod his head in time to the song's beat. 

The smile over Shiro’s lips pulls a bit wider, even as a small ache starts nibbling at his heart. Seconds later, Keith’s voice cuts over the crowd again. “Yeah, you do seem to bring her plenty of that. . .”

Hunk is grinning when Shiro looks at him several moments later. “How about Keith?”

“Hmm?” Shiro gives his head a slight shake, then suddenly jolts up a bit straighter as he recognizes the question for what it had been. Or what he would be more inclined to interpret it as being in that moment. “Oh, he’s great! I think he finally figured out how to channel all that rebellion to the stage. . .but he looks at home up there now. . .”

There’s only silence in response, which Shiro takes as nothing more than adequate until he catches Hunk’s gaze and sees the confusion drawing his eyebrows together. 

“So, are you guys. . .?” Hunk rolls his wrist several times through the air.

“Everything is like it usually is?” Shiro picks up, uncertainty treading through his tone. “I mean the apartment’s been a little quieter than usual what with them preparing for tonight, but that’s not any different from their other performances.”

Hunk pushes away from the wall, only his left shoulder pressed against it now, and he is blinking at Shiro like he’s just stated the sky is liquid mercury, or that cats moo and that these things are simply the way of it all now so everyone may as well accept it. 

“ _Wow_ ,” Hunk whistles out. “What are you like Keith’s personal Mt. Everest or something?”

“What do you mean?”

Hunk’s hands are up and waving in front of him as he turns to resettle himself – back to the wall and his eyes fixed on the stage. “Nothing, just. . .I think I made a mistake about something somewhere. . .Maybe.”

When Hunk kicks his head towards the stage, Shiro catches Keith just as he curves his body against the microphone stand, fingers pulling the last few notes out of his guitar. His head cants to the right, his mouth closing slow around the fading syllables of his lyrics, and as his lips come together, his gaze meets Shiro’s. And just like that, Keith’s eyes are shut, and there’s this beautiful bowing of his mouth, and everything goes perfectly right with the world.

Shiro exhales hard. The crowd erupts with whistles and shouts. Just over the noise, Shiro can make out Lance encouraging everyone to scream louder, but all he can see is the way Keith steps out of the lights beating down over the front end of the stage, the corner of his mouth still carrying the smallest curve to it and his chest heaving. 

Hunk leans in against Shiro, smiling. “So, how’s that physics class going?” 

It takes Shiro several moments before he can find his breath again, just long enough for Hunk’s smile to morph into a grin, and there is something almost devious about its creation. He steps back, his heels hitting the wall before his back does, and something in the shadows of his mind wonders when he ever left his place against it to begin with. His gaze drifts back to the stage where Keith is strumming a few wayward notes over his guitar, Allura picking up a few beats behind it on her drums.

“So, I know you all have been enjoying some of the new stuff, but we’re going to take a minute and revisit some of our favorite covers,” Lance calls out over the crowd, which earns him a few whoops along with a couple of catcalls, but his responses to those are lost on Shiro as he turns his attention back to Hunk.

“Oh, it’s about as thrilling as sharpening all of Slav’s pencils. . .” he finally answers, his thoughts still thick with cloud-cover. 

Everything around him falls to a hushed whisper, rife with anticipation, and it strings something up tight within Shiro's core.

“He still does that?” Hunk murmurs.

_And if I had my way I would run to the rescue. . ._

“God forbid one of them snaps while he’s writing and in the time it takes him to sharpen another he loses his train of thought. . .” Shiro answers, his voice seeming to drift out of focus as Keith’s layers over his own with the start of the next song. One all too familiar to him. “. . .and the whole world ends up robbed of some spark of brilliance.”

_I don’t wanna let you go, but I can’t stand to watch this. . ._

“Well, as consolation, I’ll bring you something good the next time I find you in the dungeon.”

Shiro nods, offering a smile weak with distraction. “A knife?”

“What? No!” Hunk hisses. “Like mac-and-cheese, dude. . .”

_Give me the words to say to make it enough. . ._

Shiro sighs, averting his gaze from the stage and finding Hunk staring at him in mock horror. “I suppose that’s just as good. . .”

Hunk shakes his head but says nothing more. Only smiles this odd little smile that leaves Shiro feeling like he’s just stepped on the trigger to a landmine and can’t move without devastating something in the process.

_But I don’t ever know just what we are. . ._

Keith’s voice deepens just slightly as he digs in for the next line, his mouth once more courting the head of the microphone, eyelids at half-mast. Sweat beads along his brow, rolling down in single droplets over his temple and ending just at his jawline. His eyebrows knit together, his mouth opening just a little bit wider as the next few lines spill out, and Shiro finds that familiar hollowness carving out his heart. 

_I will wait in the dark for you, should’ve never felt this way. . ._

Hunk nudges his shoulder. “He looks good up there tonight. . .” 

Laughter finds Shiro again, ringing empty and lost, but the smile that takes his lips in its wake is full of quiet wonder. “You just had to go and say it. . .”

_You had me under spell right from the start._

Hunk’s lips are parted by a pause, his eyes searching every bit of Shiro’s face. Studying silently all the things Shiro doesn’t bother to say, doesn’t give himself room to say. But in the darkened hall crowded full of people and body heat, all with their eyes on Keith as he gives himself over to freedom, Shiro thinks that maybe it’s okay to fall to the bit of human that wants so desperately to claim him. 

With a short laugh, Hunk is shaking his head once more. “You’re a far more troubled man than you let on, aren’t you?”

_I don’t have a telepathic heart. . ._

“Sometimes, it feels like my whole life has been defined by trouble, Hunk.”


	3. Spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took a detour for the Valentine's piece, but back at it with this one now. Some of you may read this and already know the song selection, but just in case, pick up the piano version of "Kissing You" which is the love theme from Romeo and Juliet soundtrack, and is sung by Des'ree should you fancy that version as well.

“You really are in here.”

Shiro glances up from the piano, his fingers continuing to drift across the keys, playing nothing in particular. A quiet, nameless bit of tune that carries across the room, the perfect cut of soundtrack for the ache starting to stir in his heart. All because of one person, standing there in the doorway, his shadow pooling across the floor and the smallest contented smile whispering over his lips. 

“I figured I shouldn’t let Ulaz’s offer go to waste this semester. . .” Shiro replies, unable to help the way his mouth curves, as automatic as breathing, in response to the sight. 

Keith finally pushes away from the doorframe, striding across the room soundless, confident. He stops beside the piano, running his fingers along the outer rim of its top until they hit the edge just a jump above the keys. They linger there, failing to take the final plunge. Shiro huffs out softly, amused by his own desires, his gaze fixed on the red paint over Keith’s fingernail.

The ring finger this time.

“Doesn’t the room open up for you all soon?” Shiro questions. He glances upwards, briefly catching Keith’s gaze with the slight lift of an eyebrow before he turns his attention back to the wayward song his fingers are crafting. 

“They’re setting up now,” Keith replies. “Hunk said you were here. . .”

“And now you are too,” Shiro follows up.

The blush that showers Keith’s cheeks in response proves well worth the comment. 

“I just had to see it for myself,” he mutters, a touch sulkily. 

Laughter flows over Shiro’s lips, and he mimics it across the keys, quietly affectionate in tone. 

“And now that you have?” he asks, his gaze drifting back up to catch on Keith’s once more. Around them, the room had seemed impossibly large, swallowing them whole, but the minute his eyes meet Keith’s, Shiro feels the world around him shrinking. Condensing down to the space encircling the two of them, the piano, and the weak bit of sunlight still trickling in through the windows. And it’s not problematic in the least, because for every inch lost on the outside, Shiro sees it expanding in Keith’s gaze, in the look that flickers and flashes and burns brighter with every second. 

An entire universe for the taking. 

Something digs into his chest, and with one sharp breath, Shiro is looking down at the keys once more. All around him the world rushes back into being, cold and echoing of a song that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. 

“You. . .” Keith begins, his voice subdued by uncertainty. He swallows, shifting his weight from right to left to right again. When he doesn’t follow up, Shiro looks over, eyebrow arching up again. Keith’s mouth pulls tight, like it always does when his thoughts are rioting and he’s trying to figure out how best to settle them with as little devastation as possible.

Shiro exhales softly as his fingers ripple over several keys to create a trembling spill of notes, over and over, a would-be song shivering with worry. As the smile breaches his lips, he glances up once again and finds Keith glaring down at him. 

“Really?” Keith mumbles.

Shiro breaks into laughter again. “You had that look. . .”

Keith takes a deep inhale. Shiro’s fingers settle back into a gentle rhythm once more.

“It’s nice. . .to see you playing again,” Keith starts up again. His eyes are fixed on the keys, the ones Shiro isn’t playing, and the blush is still sitting soft over his cheeks, on the pink end of red’s spectrum now. He hesitates yet again, lips parted, eyes searching, and as if realizing the keys left soundless won’t offer him any means of an escape, takes a step forward. “You look good there. . .”

Keith’s last words come out almost inaudible, but Shiro had heard them. Undeniably heard them. He can feel his skin flush, and though he knows it will accomplish nothing, he clears his throat in the hope it might wipe away the color he imagines is now staining his cheeks. 

Shiro shuts his eyes. But it doesn’t matter, because all he can see is Keith. How he had last stood on the stage two nights ago, with his mouth just slightly open, his voice quivering as he sung the lyrics Shiro had watched him write months before for a crowd small in size but thoroughly engaged in the performance. How the sweat had trickled over his skin beneath the too-bright stage lights, how their eyes had met as they had so many other times over the closing syllables of the song and how that damning spill of a smile had taken Keith’s mouth in that moment and put the racket of Shiro’s heartbeat right into his head. 

How he had thought, later that night, of that same smile and just what would it taste like against his lips. 

“Shiro?”

It feels like something shatters, small shards hitting the floor of everything that he believes himself to be, when Keith says his name. Shiro breathes in, lets his eyes open to consume the reality around him once more. 

“It’s nothing,” he responds, a smile taking his mouth in full reassurance. But Keith is staring at him with that same darkness to his gaze that makes Shiro think a world of things he shouldn’t, makes him believe Keith has seen through him from the start and if that isn’t the most heartbreaking thing in the world, then Shiro doesn’t know what is. 

He clears his throat softly. “Ulaz says he started you guys on Shakespeare. . .”

Keith says nothing at first. He simply stands there with his lips pulled tight, damming up everything he wants to say, and that gaze piercing and remorseless. After a moment, he shakes his head, and Shiro knows relenting when he sees it. 

“Yeah. . .I ended up pulling Romeo and Juliet.” And there’s something almost like distaste coursing through the title as it drops from Keith’s lips, which has Shiro smiling a far more genuine bit of one over it all. “I have to find some sort of other adaptation of it to write about. . .”

Shiro hums softly at that, remembering the course well. His fingers settle in over the keys, and start up a song, a properly constructed one this time. One that has Keith blinking down at him, a small frown starting to worry his mouth. 

“What is it?” Shiro prods.

“This song. . .” 

A nod of his head as he continues to play. “You recognize it?”

“Of course!” Keith almost blurts it out, nearly stumbling forward. The shock of it has Shiro looking up in alarm, but not a single note is lost, the song carried forward with a precision known to memory alone. “It’s from the movie. . .that one scene when they meet for the first time. . .”

Shiro relaxes again, as the calm climbs back into Keith’s voice, moving it to a controlled whisper by the end.

“You remembered, huh?”

“How could I forget it?” Keith replies, quick but quiet still. “You. . .you played this once. And you said. . .”

But again Keith stops. And Shiro keeps playing on, slow and steady, countering all the fear he can hear in Keith’s words, the soft-spoken desperation, with every note he hits. Even as all of it kickstarts the ache in his heart, renewing it with all the force vengeance tends to carry. Keith’s fingers curl in over the edge of the piano where they had been hanging loose only seconds before.

“When you talked about this song, you said how simple it was but also really powerful. Because even without the lyrics, the song itself. . .you just had to listen to it to know all the longing within it. . .how badly it wanted. . .” Keith’s voice nearly breaks over the last statement. 

Everything within Shiro falters – his thoughts, his heart. His very soul crumbling at the pain cutting into Keith’s words. His fingers slow, but don’t stop. 

“You could play it with me,” Shiro says, gently. “I know you remember how. . .”

Keith shakes his head. “I can’t. . .not this one, Shiro.”

A smile pulses briefly over his lips, jagged and painful in the making. “Why?”

Again, Keith is shaking his head, and there is nothing but pure agony in his eyes when Shiro lifts his gaze and meets that look head on. Restless and hurt, every bit of Keith screams it at that moment, and Shiro can’t remember the last time he saw him so wounded. 

“Do you even know how you look playing this song, Shiro?” Keith breathes out, his fingers curling in tight over the piano. His chest is rising and falling, rapid little breaths spilling out in a staccato rhythm, as the fear clouds dark and looming in his eyes once more. 

“I. . .” Keith pauses, fingers biting in against black lacquer, skin blanching across his knuckles. “Shiro, are you in love with someone?”

His fingers stop suddenly, leaving the second to last note hanging in the air between them, and Shiro has no idea where the sound has gone in the room. Everything has drained out from around him, only the echo of Keith’s voice and the sudden rush of blood coursing through his heart, and he remembers what it means to be afraid of everything you have ever wanted. When he breathes out, it comes with a sharp strident whine in his ears that persists even as he remembers he still alive, still breathing, still staring up at Keith like a soul lost in the empty of the world. 

“Yes,” he murmurs, his voice cutting and clear as ice as it climbs up his throat. 

Something in Keith’s expression shifts, the fear dissolving as rapid as morning mist under the sun's glaring rays only to be replaced by something darker still. A look broken and heart-wrenching, one that has Shiro rising with a start from the piano bench, his hands crashing down over the keys.

“Keith. . .”

Keith is shaking his head again. “You know, I told Ulaz I didn’t want Romeo and Juliet. It’s not even a good love story. I mean, it’s complete bullshit, actually. . .”

“ _Keith_. . .”

But the warning carried in that name isn’t enough to stop Keith this time. He only gives Shiro this half-smile, lips slightly parted, and shrugs. 

“The whole story is nothing but people lying and making excuses. If just one person had owned up to the truth then maybe they wouldn’t have ended up dead. . .”

Shiro pushes the bench away from him with the backs of his knees, its legs sliding across the floor with a horrendous screech. He steps away from the piano, closing the distance between them, but once he’s there standing before Keith, Shiro suddenly doesn’t know what to do or how he would even go about figuring that out. There is only that soul-deep knowledge that he needs to do something because there are tears collecting along Keith’s lashes and there had been a tremble to his voice and all of it has Shiro’s heart flatlining.

And he thinks that it can’t be all that impossible to die while the breath is still moving in and out of your lungs, and the blood keeps rolling through your veins. While your heart keeps beating even though the life in it is slowly fading. 

He reaches out, setting his hand on the back of Keith’s head and leans in to press their foreheads together lightly. As Keith starts speaking again, Shiro shuts his eyes and lets the sound of his voice soak into him, with all its anger and all its pain. Every bit of it that he has earned.

“Right? Look at it, Shiro. You know, if just one person had spoken up, if they had just said something, _anything_ , then death didn’t have to be the end. All they did was make a hell for themselves.”

“Do you think it was easy?” Shiro whispers, not trusting himself to speak at all in this moment but doing so anyways because even if he is the shattered mess of a man he feels he is, he has never been able to deny Keith in these moments. “To have that much hatred around them and still want to love despite it, do you really think it was that easy for them?”

“Shiro, are you really in-“

The door groans, this wretched croaking sort of sound that reverberates throughout the room, and puts the silence right into Keith. Shiro can feel him lock down, his muscles going rigid, teeth gritting, as Keith forces every bit of himself back into some semblance of control. 

And for the first time in a very long time, Shiro feels anger shooting up through his veins, his patience frayed, his emotions far too raw to be tested any further. Only there is nothing he can do, not at this moment. Keith is already out of his hands, standing a foot away with his head turned as he wipes at his eyes, quietly clears his throat. 

“Oh, shit – my bad!”

He knows he cannot blame Hunk for his poor timing because life always loves applying Murphy’s Law to whatever it can, and Shiro is certain poor timing is one of its patented tricks. 

“I’m. . .” Hunk sounds like a man being strangled by guilt, constrictor tight and fully accepting of his fate. “Sorry, guys, but everything’s set up. You only have the room for an hour today, Keith, so everyone is just. . .Sorry.”

“Yeah. . .it’s fine, Hunk. . .” Shiro answers, trying to put some semblance of _okay_ into his words. But as Keith walks out of the room, the only thing Shiro hears is that last note unresolved and his heartbeat shallow in the echo of its wake.

*

_"Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”_

_“I do bite my thumb, sir.”_

_“Do you bite your thumb at us. . . .sir?”_

It’s the first thing Shiro hears when he opens the door to the apartment. As he shrugs out of his coat, toes out of his shoes, he catches Keith glancing back from where he had tucked himself up on the far corner of the couch. The television falls to silence, the characters stuck in their quarrel at the gas station, as he pauses the movie. 

“You’re back late. . .”

Shiro offers a small but thoroughly apologetic smile. “Things took a little longer at the lab than expected. You’re actually watching it?”

Red streaks across Keith’s cheeks. He turns back to the television quickly, pulling one of the pillows from the couch into his lap with a short huff. 

“I had to choose something. . . .and this one has the best soundtrack to it.”

When Shiro drops down to the couch, it’s with laughter on his lips and the ache slowly easing out of his shoulders. He stretches his left arm over the top edge of the couch, sinks back into the cushions and sets his feet on top of the coffee table. As Keith reaches over and puts the movie back into motion, he finally lets himself breathe out.

Keith’s fingers linger over the edge of the couch, the remote abandoned on the coffee table. Shiro catches his gaze as Keith looks over, brief and uncertain, locked in the midst of some action Keith hasn’t convinced himself to complete just yet. Shiro has seen it all before and tips his head to the side, feeling a different brand of ache sprout in his chest and put the twist to his smile.

And just like that, the tension evaporates from Keith’s shoulders, the lines of his fingers, and he falls over so that his head is resting on Shiro’s thigh and his legs are tucked up along the remaining length of the couch. He’s rolled over on his right side, his gaze fixed on the television screen as bullets fly and car tires scream across the pavement. 

Shiro pulls his left arm from the back of the couch and carefully sets his fingers against Keith’s temple, brushing away at the hair there, completely untamed. Keith’s left bicep goes rigid, the breath pulling in sharp over his lips, and as Shiro lets his fingers drift deeper into Keith’s hair, everything starts to unravel again. He watches as Keith’s chest rises then falls with slow and steadied breath, as his arm goes slack, wrist sliding away from his hip until his hand hits the couch cushion below. 

“I still think it’s a shit story,” Keith murmurs.

A smile tugs at Shiro’s mouth, and there is nothing he can do to keep the amusement from leaking into his voice. “Oh yeah?”

Keith gives a small nod as Shiro’s fingers continue to brush through his hair. 

“Yeah.” A pause, the breath shuddering over his lips as he exhales. And Shiro finds himself forgetting the movie entirely when Keith’s tongue slides out, the tip wetting his lower lip. “Why die for one another when they could’ve said something from the start? Why die when they could have fought for one another instead?”

Shiro still finds amusement floating through his thoughts, even as it takes a turn for the darker. This bleak sort of humor that makes him want to laugh regardless.

“Then Shakespeare couldn’t have called it a tragedy,” Shiro replies, quiet as he watches Keith shift against him. “And it wouldn’t have been much of a comedy either. . .”

“Love doesn’t have to be tragic to be called a good story. . .”

_As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. Have at thee, coward!_

Shiro’s fingers still, tips still buried within Keith’s hair, resting lightly against his scalp. “I think love is a lot more complicated than one label or another might imply.”

Keith rolls his head slightly, just enough to cause Shiro’s fingers to slip, and taking the cue, Shiro once more starts threading his way through Keith’s hair.

“What are you – the prince of cats now?” 

Laughter escapes from him once more, gentle and affectionate, judging nothing despite his words. 

Keith turns his head, tossing a petulant glare up at Shiro. “I’m nothing like Tybalt.”

Shiro tips his head, eyebrow curving in open question, and smiles down at Keith seconds later. Shamelessly amused. 

“I’m not,” Keith mutters as he turns back to the movie with a huff. 

“Well, you are something of a cat,” Shiro replies, fingers abandoning Keith’s head in favor of running a quick course down Keith’s arm straight to his hip. It has Keith arching unexpectedly (delightedly, if Shiro wants to be honest with himself, but he quickly forces those thoughts back into the shadows) beneath the taunt of his touch.

“So what. . .” Keith mumbles against Shiro's thigh, refusing to acknowledge Shiro in any other manner. As if, by some charm, the movie and its so-called shit story had suddenly proven well worth the investment. “It’s comfortable here. . .”

And there is truth in those words. With one touch, Shiro had watched as the tension peaked then slid away from Keith’s body, leaving him relaxed and pliant over the couch, his thigh. A perfect play of feline for every ounce of it Keith had not quite denied existed. 

Fireworks burst across the television screen, drawing Shiro’s attention back to the movie. His fingers brush absently over Keith’s forearm, up and down, over and over and over again. He can feel the muscle beneath, cording tightly every so often beneath his touch, and it reminds him of the times he had watched Keith play, how ligaments and tendons strained with the pull of his muscles as he plucked another song from his guitar strings. 

The movie is forgotten entirely, no more than a shadow thrown across the wall, as Shiro finds himself watching Keith instead. He had curled his right hand just under his neck, fingers stretching across the skin above them. His lips are just barely parted, the smallest gateway for the breath that comes in and out, soft and settled, so perfectly at home. Every so often, Keith’s eyes shift, following one thing or another on the television, and as the party flares bright across the screen, Shiro can see it illuminate Keith’s eyes, putting this multi-faceted glow across his irises. At the corner of his eye, his hair curls just slightly at the tips, sitting as untamed as it had before Shiro had started working on it, which Shiro knows happened solely because Keith had failed to properly dry it after his shower, letting it run wild as every bit of Keith himself tended to do. 

Sometimes at his best. Sometimes at his worst. 

Shiro had come to accept both parts of him in that, each endearing in their own way, each equally as frustrating in others. 

Suddenly though, the tension slinks through Keith once again, insidious as a viper cutting across desert sand, starting at his hand, spiraling up his arm and into his shoulder until his jaw is set and his lips shut tight. 

Shiro glances up at the screen as the sound of a piano comes into focus, then down at his hand where fingertips had been playing along with every note across Keith’s forearm. 

Keith stirs, just a slight stretching of his legs, a tilt of his head lengthening out the column of his neck. His tongue darts out to moisten his lips, and Shiro notes the way his eyes have gone a soul-searching dark. 

Then, quietly, “Are you really in love with someone?”

The air turns caustic in his lungs, burning though his cells, putting the hurt right back into his bloodstream. Shiro breathes in and immediately wishes he hadn’t because it only reminds him how painful the act can be sometimes. Against his thigh, Keith is silent, every ounce of him strung up tight.

Shiro’s fingertips still completely, the song lifeless over skin. He sets his palm flat across Keith’s forearm with fingers curling in lightly on the next exhale. 

“Hopelessly,” he murmurs.

A jolt causes Keith’s shoulder to jump. His mouth twists with a frown. “Why haven’t you told them?”

Shiro breathes out again, forcing his gaze from Keith, from the television, putting it anywhere that has nothing. Within his chest, he can feel his heart trying to claw its way out, can feel his thoughts and every bit of _better reasoning_ he’s ever been told he should have trying to force it back into submission. A smile cracks his lips, and the laugh that comes is subdued.

When Keith asks, Shiro has only ever been able to be honest – sometimes bluntly, sometimes with a scalding sense of humor – but always honest, always himself. And he knows that there is nothing of better reasoning or right and proper that would ever take that honesty from him in the face of all that Keith is. 

Not with all that they have been to one another over the years. Not as they sit here, alone. 

Not even with a handful of fears and a world of unknown staring him down. 

Because Keith asks, Shiro answers.

“. . .I don’t want to ruin them.”

Keith inhales. He pulls his left hand up from the couch and places it against Shiro’s thigh, nestling his head against it. And just like that, the tension dissolves like snow in late spring.

“You couldn’t possibly ruin someone you love, Shiro,” he states, low but solid in its certainty. “. . .after all, look at me.”


	4. Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This turned out way longer than I had anticipated, negl. But it's been a fun foray back into AU, and I have thoroughly enjoyed crafting this story.
> 
> And as with the others, music for this chapter comes with a few songs given it's a big lengthier than the others: "Dark Star" by Starset (honestly this is the song that kickstarted this idea just like it had with the Homecoming series), "Mercy" by Shawn Mendes - the acoustic/piano version, "Work Song" by Hozier, and lastly "The Aviators (extended version)" by Helen Jane Long.
> 
> Thank you all for tuning into this! I really hope you enjoy!

“Shiro!”

His name rises above the current of noise, the typical flood of it most bars experience on a Friday night, and earns him a fair number of stares in the process. Shiro can’t help but smile though as he weaves his way around the tables, giving slight nods in apology when he bumps into one patron or another milling around, and over to the main bar where the others are sitting, each with their drink of preference before them. He settles into a seat at the end of their line-up, right beside Keith.

“How was work?” Keith asks, this odd little smile hanging around his mouth that has Shiro second-guessing where he is for a moment.

But before Shiro can respond, Lance is slipping from his bar stool and making his way over with Shiro’s name a litany on his lips and this flash of devil’s fire in his eyes.

“You’re late!” Lance chides, as he slides up and throws an arm around Shiro’s shoulders, leaning in with all the weight a conspiracy in the making should carry. “ _Way_ too late, buddy, but still in time for Keith’s song. . .”

Confusion muddles his thoughts at those words. Shiro glances around him, then down the length of the bar where Pidge shrugs helplessly at him and Hunk mouths _I’m sorry_ over the rim of his beer. Allura is draped over the bar and talking to Coran, gesturing in Shiro’s direction. When he turns his gaze back to Keith, he’s still sitting there smiling that odd bit of smile at him that Shiro is starting to recognize as being built of tenuous hope sitting right atop a foundation of fear. A reckless, to-hell-with-it-all sort of fear that puts the spark in men’s eyes when they have nothing more to lose. 

Nothing left but still terribly afraid of watching even that leave them. 

“You’re going up there?” Shiro asks quietly.

Keith nods his head, his gaze dropping to the space between them. When he lifts his eyes once more, Shiro clearly can see the quiet terror that exists in the depths of them, a fear clinging to an even greater hope. And it has his heartbeat tripping up over his thoughts, his every desire, all the things he could do to banish that look from Keith’s gaze. 

A glass is set down before him with a hard _chink!_ , pulling Shiro’s attention reluctantly away from Keith. Lance ascends from his position across Shiro, rising up to his full height, and comes to roost next beside Keith. Coran pushes the glass towards him with a wide, welcoming smile. 

“It’s been awhile, Shiro! How’s everything been going?”

Shiro glances back at Keith, only to find him glaring at Lance and muttering something Shiro would rather forget. Lance, for his part, looks about as satisfied as a dog that finally got the cat to take the blame for his fury-inducing antics. 

“It’s been fine, Coran. . .” Shiro answers, distracted. When Coran tips his head in question, Shiro shakes his own in response and offers a small smile. “Things have been fine. _Really_.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it! Didn’t know what to make of things with poor Keith over there. . .”

“What do you mean?” And even Shiro is taken aback by the cut of his question, his voice sharp as broken glass and promising to be just as lethal. 

Coran blinks at him, his mouth pulling tight for a moment, gaze turning critical. Keith is still bickering with Lance over something, his brow furrowed and mouth scowling, all to Lance’s apparent amusement. 

Forearms flat to the bartop, Coran leans in close to Shiro. “He’s normally a lot more like you when he comes here. Always has been even when you were just an undergrad. You almost never see him play into Lance’s hands. . .”

And with all the suddenness of a falling star, cold and clear as it slices across the night sky, everything makes complete and perfect sense. Shiro groans softly as his head drops into his palms. 

“Tell me he didn’t. . .”

Coran is there, nodding his head like there are simply some inevitabilities in life and this had been one of them. “Three shots of Fireball. . .”

“I was only an hour late. . .” A complaint issued into his hands, and just like the rest of him, they have no further consolation to offer. 

“Oh, it’s all right, Shiro. He’s managing quite well if you ask me!” Coran pushes himself back up, shoulders straightening as he slips out of his role as confidant and back into that of bartender. “Looks like you’re up Keith!”

Shiro glances over to the far end of the room, where a song title flashes in bright red and white against the brick wall, just over the stage with its microphone stand and piano standing silently upon it. There’s something horribly daunting about the emptiness of the stage at that moment, looming large with expectation. Keith is tugging on the sleeve of his T-shirt, and when Shiro looks down, it’s to find a gaze wild and bright staring right into him. 

It reminds Shiro of how a candle can burn in the dead of night, flickering across the dark of the world, and knowing that there are monsters lurking in the shadows and that none of them can touch him as long as that light keeps dancing.

And when it sputters, throwing the last of what it has to give, it will do so to the rising of the sun.

Keith leans in, the back of his head coming to rest against Shiro’s shoulder.

“Come up there with me, Shiro,” he murmurs, with more grey than blue to his eyes now, with a look wanting and imploring, and his lips keeping the barest part to them in anticipation of Shiro’s response. 

Something is cut loose within his chest. The whole world goes magnificently black around him. 

Sometimes, Shiro wonders if it’s not the monsters he loves instead. 

He nods, solemn but accepting, and glances over at the stage once more. Already he can hear the song starting in his head, every note intimately known, sung in a voice that has been his own personal siren’s call, sending him crashing again and again. Keith tugs him to his feet. Shiro sinks his weight down into them, holding Keith firm as he reaches over and downs the entirety of his drink in several quick swallows. The glass rattles as he sets it back on the bar.

Coran smiles at him, the curve of his mouth soft with understanding. “It isn’t much of a piano bar if no one is playing the piano, you know.”

There’s a faint smile in response to that, but all Shiro can register is the warmth of Keith’s hand as it wraps around his own, as the voices around them fall to murmuring. He’s pulled between the tables towards the stage, and no apologies come this time for the various bumps and jolts along the way. Before him, Keith is steadfast and strangely unafraid, and that alone takes the edge off of the fear that has crept over Shiro in the wake of his loss of control. 

Because if there is anything he wants to believe in, it’s Keith. 

As Shiro climbs up onto the stage, the world around him grows imposing. This large, monstrosity of the thing that threatens to swallow him whole. He turns his gaze to the piano, reaches out to steady himself against it. Beside him, Keith finally releases his hand, letting fingertips drift across his lower back, then walks over to the microphone. Shiro looks over, sees that small curl to Keith’s mouth and finds that the rest of the world doesn’t matter.

Not when their eyes meet, and that curve of Keith’s lips grows by the smallest of fractions.

Shiro huffs out softly, shaking his head as he sits down on the bench and spreads his fingers over the keys, letting them hover there. A breath, sharp and cold on the inhale, then warm and settling on the exhale seconds later. His fingers press down; the song begins. Every touch upon the keys is light at the start, quiet company as Keith’s voice sounds out across the room. 

_I call your name as I walk alone  
Send a signal to guide me home_

The hammering in his heart starts to die away as Keith continues to sing. Shiro glances up from the piano to where Keith is standing, his eyes closed, his hand wrapped loosely around the microphone stand. Each syllable aches as it falls from his lips, this soft-spoken pain resonating right through Shiro as he continues to watch Keith fall open before an entire audience. 

_But I found in you what was lost in me  
In a world so cold and empty_

The breath stills in his lungs, snared by emotions Shiro has tried again and again to decimate. Only to find them revived every night, with every memory of every song ever sung by Keith. With every smile that had ever graced his lips as everything he had worked to construct fell right into the places he needed them. Or when he would come rushing out of his room, insisting that they go and _do something_ because Keith could never quite sit still when everything started burning within him. 

And he found them every morning when Keith would come stumbling out of bed, every bit the hot mess his late nights told him he would be and not caring in the least because it was Shiro waiting for him in the kitchen and there had never been anything worth fearing there.

_You’re the cause, the antidote,  
The sinking ship I could not let go_

Air moves through his lungs once again, and with it, something cuts into his heart. Or maybe it’s that something has been pulled out of it, and now it’s left him bleeding and broken but finally free. Keith’s body curves up along the microphone stand, sinuous and promising. Shiro shudders over the sight, his eyes closing seconds later as he tilts his head down towards the piano. 

But like so many times before, it doesn’t matter. Because Keith is singing with that voice full of longing and it winds its way through him, the sweetest bit of knowledge that has ever poisoned a man. 

To know and to want.

Shiro exhales, letting his fingers dance along the keys as the instrumentals of the song pick up in the background, synchronizing the piano to its melody. It continues to build and build, rising ever higher, growing ever deeper, only to break over Keith’s voice. Notes cascading and crashing down, swelling with the emotion carried by the lyrics belted out over them.

_Blinded, I can’t do this on my own  
You are all I’ve got to guide me home_

The pressure around him releases with one short gasp. His fingers dance light across the keys, soothing in the wake of all that had rushed down just seconds before. Keith glances over at him, and in his eyes, Shiro sees nothing of the dark, nothing to fear. 

Just Keith.

And he is exquisite, smiling as the next words flow over his tongue, as his gaze lingers a moment longer on Shiro’s before he’s turning back to the microphone once more. His heart jumpstarts, its beat full of need, for this is far beyond wanting in this moment, and there is nothing he can do to curb that now. 

One moment for Shiro to realize it’s entirely possible to bleed out and find yourself far more alive for the effort.

_I could lie awake just to watch you breathe._

Shiro doesn’t hear the last line. He doesn’t need to, because all he sees is Keith, standing there with his forehead millimeters away from pressing against the microphone’s head with his eyes shut and a smile on his lips, just a bit broken by its own happiness. When he rolls his head to the side, eyes opening to fix themselves on Shiro, the first word Shiro hears is his name dropping breathlessly from Keith’s lips. 

He swallows, throat feeling thick with disuse like he hadn’t spoken since the start of time itself and now that there are a million different things he wants to put out there, nothing will work right. All he can do is look at Keith standing there. His fingers curl in over the keys, pulling out a wayward note that finally shakes him back to reality. Shiro scans the room, and only then begins hearing the various calls and spills of laughter from around the room. 

When he rises from the piano, making his way towards the front of the stage, there’s a small bewitched sort of smile pulling at his lips. He hops down, waiting for Keith to jump down in his wake, and when he finally does, Shiro reaches behind him. Seconds later, Keith’s hand finds his. Fingers curl in tight around Keith’s as they weave through the tables again, this time with smiles and nods of acknowledgment for the comments tossed their way. But just like that smile that had taken Keith’s mouth on the stage, all Shiro feels is the burn of skin against his own, trusting without fault as they work their way back to the bar. 

He drops into his seat with a hard exhale, mouth pulling wide as he grins down at his emptied glass. And just as he thinks to look along the length of the bar, to see how all the others are reacting, everything falls to utter silence around him.

Stilled by a few words pressed against his ear in a whisper, quietly exuberant. 

“Take me home, Shiro.”

Keith has draped himself across Shiro’s shoulders, his arms crossing over his chest and fingers linking together as lips press against the shell of his ear. And it’s like someone had taken the sound right out of the room, pulled the plug on the drain and let everything spiral away into nothing. All that remains is the pulse of Keith’s breath against his skin, that tiny curve of his lips, and the echo of his words, warm and wanting. 

A single drop in the ocean, rippling out across Shiro’s world. 

“Okay,” Shiro murmurs, tipping his head just enough to catch Keith’s gaze. “Let’s go home.”

*

To say their departure had come as a surprise would have been the lie of the century. Shiro couldn’t help but notice the strange smiles they were given by almost everyone there, except for Lance who simply shooed them towards the door like they were ruining his fun. Shiro had apologized more than twice for everything, promising to pay their tabs another time, while Keith had stood impatiently at the entrance.

By the time he makes it to the door, Keith is already outside and halfway down the block. The sky is a brilliant purple-blue, with the moon sitting high and silvered in its glow, stars studding the fabric of night. Keith pauses at the end of the block. Shiro trots to catch up to him.

“Are you sure you didn’t want to stay?” he asks as he falls into line beside Keith.

A simple shake of his head is all Shiro gets. 

“All right.” It is more of a laugh, quiet and tamed, than anything else. 

There’s still fire in Keith’s eyes, dark and promising, and it feels like it’s set a thousand adders loose in Shiro’s core. Slithering one over the other, breath held just waiting to see which if any would bite and end all of him. And Keith could very well be the end of all that he has strived to be. 

A most marvelous downfall. 

Shiro finds Keith’s hand in his once more, fingers brushing against the leather cuff around Keith's wrist as they’re claimed, one after the other. In the heat of the summer’s night, still a touch humid even at this hour, Shiro feels a chill cascade down his spine. 

Their apartment is only several blocks from the bar, not much of a walk, but more than enough for Keith to find his place at Shiro’s side. And Shiro doesn’t know whether to call the silence between them perfectly comfortable or unusually awkward because it feels like a strange combination of both. One minute he feels he should say something, the next Keith is nestling closer, and all the words fly from his tongue, as startled as the sparrows foraging along the edges of the sidewalk at their approach.

They enter the building in silence, just as before, but as they stand in front of the elevator, Keith leans into him, heavy and with the tease of a grin on his lips.

“Who needs the prince of cats. . .” 

Shiro blinks as the elevator dings its arrival on the ground floor. “What does Tybalt have to do with this?”

The doors to the elevator open. Keith shakes his head as he pulls Shiro inside. “No, I’m just saying who needs cats. We could be lions instead, Shiro.”

“Lions?” Shiro echoes, thoroughly confused. “Is this what you were thinking of the entire walk back?”

A bob of Keith’s head as the doors shut. And then, with absolute certainty - “Kings of our domain.”

Shiro starts laughing. Like something had just burst unexpectedly inside of him, and all that is left is to be hopelessly, wonderfully amused at the mess made. “You really are –“

But there’s no finishing that sentence. Keith’s mouth is on his, one hand pressed against Shiro’s hip and the other against the wall of the elevator. A moan slips over his lips, right against Keith’s mouth, completely unbidden but undeniably there. Shiro can still catch the faint hints of cinnamon on Keith’s tongue, lacing his breath, and as much as he doesn’t want to, he’s reaching up to run his hand up the back of Keith’s neck and pulling him in closer.

Because this is not something he should be doing, but something else whispers that there are only seconds left in this ride up to their floor and when those doors open he can find himself the room to make better decisions, but for now. . .for now. . .

Keith’s lips taste fucking fantastic, and every bit of desire Shiro has ever denied himself screams in riotous delight throughout his mind. As if to say _told you so_ , that sometimes the reality proves greater than the fantasy and what a fool he had been to satisfy himself with thoughts alone for all these years. 

The elevator’s doors open with a jolt. Keith is pulling at Shiro’s shirt, coaxing him down the hall, and Shiro can’t think of anything but the cool that hits his lips now that they are emptied of Keith’s warmth. Something he doesn’t have long to consider because Keith is fumbling with the keys to their door and Shiro is left trying not to fit himself along the curve of Keith’s body. He settles for weaving an arm around Keith’s waist, steadying him as he finds the right key to let them inside.

And is still left cursing himself for every last thought, for wishing their apartment had been a hundred more floors up so he could have left the worst parts of himself inside of the elevator instead of having to deal with them out here.

But he doesn’t have long to lament that either. Half a heartbeat later, the door to their place is opening and Keith has his hand wrapped in Shiro’s shirt once more, pulling him forward into the darkness. The door shuts behind him with solid finality, leaving Shiro wondering when all had been so terribly lost. Not that any of it matters, because Keith is kissing him again, both hands cupping his cheeks and pulling him down deep into the act of it. Keith’s back hits the wall of their entryway as Shiro takes a step forward. Seconds later, his hands meet the wall as well, planting firm on either side of Keith, who gives him a soft whine in response. 

Keith kisses him again, with breath still spiced, still hot, still terribly wanting. And Shiro relents, leaning in to meet Keith, eyes closing fast as though somehow that might save him from himself. 

“Shiro.”

It’s a quiet moan, pleading, and it may as well have twisted all the vessels feeding into his heart for all the pain it put into him. Shiro pulls back, just enough to break the ensuing kiss, with lips still wet against Keith’s, his breath coming out hard and fast. 

“You’re drunk. . .” Shiro murmurs, more in a reminder to himself than for anything Keith needed to hear. 

“. . .doesn’t change anything,” Keith whispers, taking another kiss quickly, one that Shiro cannot find himself denying. 

He leans in, letting his right forearm cave flat against the wall, as Keith’s hands drop to his chest. And just as they move low enough to tug on the hem of his shirt, Shiro starts shaking his head, pulling his mouth away from Keith’s. 

“Let’s just go to bed. . .” he breathes out harshly, feeling a new brand of self-loathing come roaring to life, condemning him vehemently from within. 

Keith stills against the wall. Shiro brings his arm away from its place beside Keith’s head and instead, reaches down to put his hand against Keith’s right cheek. He bumps their foreheads together, light and apologetic, his eyes falling shut on the next exhale. 

“. . .okay?”

Shiro can feel Keith nod in response. And he thinks that maybe, everything will find its way to right once more, that he can let his heart settle, but the moment Keith speaks, everything falls into absolute ruin. 

“Do you hate me?” It’s a broken whisper, Keith’s voice flooded with hurt and fear but nothing of regret. “For doing this. . .do you?”

“God, no” Shiro replies, voice shot through with desire and all the pain its denial calls upon. And he sets his lips against Keith’s forehead, hoping that somehow he can will the hurt out of everything that he is, but finding it utterly useless. Because Keith is here, seeming so small before him with his heart held in his hands, and Shiro can see it beating just for him. Everything is right there for the taking. “I just need you to sleep this off. . .”

When Keith finally falls asleep, curled up alongside him in his bed, Shiro doesn’t know how he manages to do it so peacefully. Not with all that noise crashing about in his chest, his heart like a hummingbird trapped beneath a glass dome, slamming again and again against the sides, trying to find its way home.

*

He wakes to sunlight pouring in through the window shades he forgot to close and Keith staring down at him, sleep-dazed.

“Morning,” Shiro murmurs, smiling softly at the sight greeting him. 

Keith nods his head, looking around the bed like he might find a better answer tucked beneath the sheets. He squeezes his eyes shut, reaching up to rub at his temple, before turning his gaze back towards Shiro. His hair is completely disheveled, his eyelids half-shuttering his gaze with that dark hangover-induced hue staining the skin just beneath his eyes, and his lips are parting like the words are sitting heavy upon them, but Keith can’t find it in him to kick them out into the air between them. 

The smile on Shiro’s lips starts to recede. He pushes himself up from the mattress, onto his elbows, where he stops after a short but no less painful protest from his right shoulder. He gives it a slow roll, gaze drifting to where his T-shirt had bunched up around the curve of it and served as a makeshift pillow for Keith, and wills the tension to work itself out of the muscles there.

“I kissed you,” Keith states, quiet with slow dawning disbelief. 

Everything halts. Shiro can feel the heat rising to his cheeks as the memory assaults him, conjuring up thoughts of everything else he had put to a stop last night as well. And he wonders, vaguely, if he might not be sitting here in bed having an entirely different sort of morning than the one facing him right now if he had let it all continue. 

“Was it that bad?” The question comes out strained over Keith’s lips. 

Shiro’s gaze shoots up from where it had fixed itself upon his shoulder, and he notes the growing horror in Keith’s expression, the fear rearing large and overwhelming once more. 

He shakes his head. “Aside from tasting like Fireball. . .”

Keith groans, his head dropping to his knees as he tugs them in close to his body. 

“You hate Fireball. . .”

And for all the misery Keith paints at that moment, Shiro only finds himself laughing. Because all of this is so completely ridiculous, every ounce of it a product of their complete and utter stupidity, and what else is left to do but laugh?

He pushes himself up to a sitting position and reaches out seconds later to run his fingers along Keith’s cheek, up across his temple.

“I didn’t hate it. . .”

But Keith is shaking his head and rolling away from him and off the bed entirely, quick as a cat’s tongue against water. His cheeks are burning a furious shade of red when he finally looks over at Shiro again, who is still sitting there on the bed, the sheets tangled around his legs and expression electric with surprise. 

“Keith?”

And there’s something like shock in his gaze, his mouth twisted into a half-grimace. Uncertain in a way Shiro has never seen Keith before. “I. . .I’m going to go take a shower. . .”

Shiro simply nods, unsure of what to do with any of this. Like being left with a handful of water-logged sand and being told to make a castle with it. 

“All right. . .” 

In the time Keith takes for himself in the shower, Shiro makes for the half-bath and tries to put the parts Keith had so wonderfully dissembled over the last twelve hours back together. Routine makes that easy in some respects, and Shiro hands himself over to the task of brushing his teeth and rinsing his face with mindless ease. He strips out of his clothes from the night before, tossing them into the hamper and settles for his usual nighttime wear of a pair of faded black sweatpants with two broad white stripes ringing around the left thigh. 

The ones Keith had gotten for him two birthdays before. The same ones Shiro can’t imagine not sleeping in. 

He settles into the kitchen, making enough coffee for two though part of him wonders if it’s going to be worth the effort. Because he still has no idea what to make of Keith’s expression as he had stood there at the side of his bed or the confusion burning a hole right through his own heart. 

Just when he thought things might start to make sense. . .

Keith steps into the kitchen, with his hair damp and something like an apology waiting to happen on his lips. He’s changed into his usual weekend wear, an old black T-shirt with their college’s logo faded across the front borrowed from Shiro in his freshman year and never returned along with a pair of red sweatpants with two solid black lines running down the outside of his legs. A look Shiro has seen him in a countless number of times over the years, one which for some reason this morning has set his heart to fluttering with renewed fury. 

“There’s coffee in the pot,” Shiro offers, his gaze firm on Keith’s figure. 

Pink suffuses across Keith’s cheeks, light as dawn’s first rays. “Thanks. . .”

The apology still lingers in Keith’s gaze, which darts from Shiro to the countertop where the empty mug stands waiting. Shiro hadn’t even thought twice about setting it out this morning. He’s starting to wonder why he’s ever thought twice about anything in this apartment. 

As Keith goes about pouring himself a cup, Shiro leans his hip against the countertop and simply watches him. A sight he’s seen a thousand times before, made entirely new. 

“Shiro. . .” Keith begins, his hand curled around his cup, his gaze fixed on the dark liquid steaming from inside of it. He doesn’t continue immediately, but Shiro says nothing. Waits as patience would have of him until Keith’s fingers tighten around the mug and an exhale breaks gently over his lips. “. . .what did you tell your parents when you were gone?”

And there is nothing of shock or fear in the wake of that question. Only acceptance, accompanied by the quick-step beating of his heart and a faint smile pulling on his lips. Shiro sets his own mug down on the countertop, letting his index finger slide over the curve of its handle. 

“A lot,” he answers, feeling a pang hit against his heart, solid as a drumbeat. “I told them a lot.”

Keith finally looks at him, with a gaze open and painfully needing. It pulls the air right out of Shiro’s lungs, drawing him one step closer to where Keith stands. 

“Why did you come back?”

“There were a lot of reasons, but. . .” Shiro pauses, watching as his palm falls flat against the counter. His fingers lift and set down in smooth succession, from pinky to thumb, the same habit he had when first sitting down at the piano. Placing his thoughts in order, one after the other until all that is left is to simply _move_. “It’s a lot easier to tell people your son is furthering his education in America than it is to explain some other things about him.”

Shiro shifts his gaze from his hand to where Keith is standing, watching him, a silent captive to this tale working itself around them. He gives a slight shrug, a smile small and helpless coming to sit upon his lips.

“And there was you. . .”

Shiro can hear the breath when Keith takes it, a piercing cut of sound. “You didn’t dislike it then?”

The smile plants itself a little firmer on his lips, growing warmer and ever more confident. “I didn’t dislike it, Keith.”

Something gives way in Keith then, his shoulders dipping low as his head drops and an exhale drains over his lips, heavy. Like a noose cut, life-sparing. A tiny but welcome mercy. 

“Shiro?”

“Yes?”

Keith reaches out as he steps closer. The fingers of his right hand hook on the edge of Shiro’s sweatpants, tips brushing against exposed skin as they curl inward. The breath falters in Shiro’s lungs, his heartbeat lulled into silence, as Keith shuts out the last of the space between them. 

“Are you in love with someone?”

Shiro breathes out, just as his heart rumbles back into working order at a furious pace. Thudding again and again, railing against the confines of his chest. And as Keith reaches up, left arm sliding over his shoulder, fingers running up the back of his neck, Shiro whispers, soft and just bit a broken. 

“Completely. . .hopelessly. . .”

Keith tips his head up, lips brushing against Shiro’s. “Can I kiss you?”

There is nothing more. Because everything has always been right here. And standing here now, in this kitchen they’ve called home for the last three years, with a soul who has been home for far longer than that, Shiro can’t even begin to comprehend why he hadn’t thought of this sooner. Why he had ever let a world not his own try to confine his heart. 

His gaze sets on Keith’s, the smile tugging more insistently on his lips now.

“Yes.”

Shiro doesn’t close his eyes right away, waiting instead as Keith presses his mouth light and tentative against his own. For a moment, Keith pauses, with his lips barely parted and his eyes locked on Shiro’s, and then he’s smiling, and his eyelids are falling shut as he finally, fully kisses Shiro. 

His hands find Keith’s hips, slipping just beneath the hem of his shirt to sit against skin and the slight jut of hipbone, which his thumbs smooth over, again and again, as if soothing the wounds gaping over their hearts, just waiting for the right touch to mend them whole. Keith pulls his right hand free and brings his arm up to join the left around Shiro’s shoulders. Lips part further, Keith sliding his tongue into Shiro’s mouth, which nearly pulls a moan right off Shiro’s tongue because there is nothing that imagination could have done for him at this moment, paling so wretchedly in the face of reality. 

After all, what is a world conjured in the mind compared to the one sitting before him now, warm against his fingers, against his mouth. All of it to become a memory, crafted from the sensations themselves instead of some poor substitute trying to satisfy a soul. 

Since when have the starving ever gotten their fill on dreams alone?

Keith starts laughing, quietly, as he pulls his head back. Just enough to let the breath put out the fire in their lungs. Shiro finds himself smiling against Keith’s lips, stealing a single kiss, before sliding his arms around Keith’s waist. 

“What?” he asks, a whisper completely unfettered. 

A shake of Keith’s head answers him first. Shiro takes another kiss in retaliation, earning him a slightly louder burst of laughter in its wake. 

“I waited so long for you. . .” Keith replies, their gazes linking as his fingers glide down Shiro’s neck and over his shoulders. The laughter fades from his lips, his eyes turning dark as they search Shiro’s relentlessly, and within their depths, Shiro can see a small flicker of sorrow in Keith’s eyes. A look he comprehends instinctively, a quiet grief for all that had been unacknowledged for far too long. 

“And now I have you. . .”

And there is a soft-spoken wonder in those last words, with that gentle undercurrent of pain, and Shiro doesn’t even know how to absolve himself of all that he had put Keith through. If he even has to, because Keith is still standing here, beautifully bewildered by the situation he’s found himself in.

Shiro feels the pressure gather across his shoulders as Keith pulls himself upward, just enough to put his lips against his ear. 

“How long do you plan on making me wait now?” Keith murmurs, nipping to punctuate his point, one Shiro understands with a sudden and glaring clarity. It pulls the moan Keith’s tongue had almost found out into the open, quiet and wanton as it spills out against Keith’s neck. 

Shiro can feel desire stir in his core, setting fire to his veins, speeding right to his heart. He breathes in, taking in the scent of Keith, skin water-clean and smelling faintly of Shiro’s shampoo. And he knows Keith has figured it all out because he can feel the way his lips curve into a smile against his ear and it leaves Shiro breathless. 

Not another word falls between them. Shiro simply finds Keith’s mouth with his own, dragging out a kiss as Keith slowly begins to coax him towards the doorway and out into the hall. Fingertips tug on the edge of his sweatpants, one after the other, pulling each step from Shiro until the kitchen and all its morning routine is left to dust memory. All of it forgotten under the promise of Keith’s mouth, then the subtle sway of his hips as he turns around and leads Shiro down the hall and into his bedroom.

And Shiro follows without question, letting hands come to rest against Keith’s sides, his lips finding a home against Keith’s neck as they linger in the doorway to his bedroom. Keith reaches behind him, hand sliding along the column of his neck, up into Shiro’s hair, encouragement found in fingertips as lips suction to skin and create their first mark upon it. 

A single signature, with all the impermanence of a shooting star, all its hopes and wants fleeting but spectacular. Because Keith has always been something of a dream, a star’s shot away from all Shiro thought he could have wished for, and now, somehow, impossibly here in his hands. 

Keith takes a step backward, curving his body along Shiro’s, and with it, that wretched roll of hips and ass right against his groin that leaves Shiro gritting his teeth. A flick of his gaze upwards reveals the tiny but potent smirk curling the corner of Keith’s mouth, and Shiro can do nothing but laugh against skin for the wicked bit of intellect Keith has shown himself capable of possessing in these moments. 

Because the truth is that Keith fits against him perfectly, right down to the very soul of him. 

Shiro wraps his arms around Keith’s waist, tugging him closer still.

“It’s been well worth the wait,” he murmurs. 

Keith gives a sharp tug on his hair in reply, which only inspires another round of laughter from Shiro.

And he thinks he should have expected full retribution for that, but when it comes, it still leaves him bereft of anything remotely intelligent. Just dumbfounded with passion. 

Keith slips from his arms, tugging out of his T-shirt and tossing it to the side like it was no more than a practice sheet, its purpose served and ready to be forgotten. He stands before the bed with the slightest angle to his head, chin tipped almost haughtily, and stares down Shiro with undisguised desire. A full look that rolls languidly up and down the length of Shiro’s body, his eyes dark as a hurricane’s front and lips parted with a small but lethal smirk just curving the right corner of his mouth. 

Shiro swallows, letting the laughter fade from his lips in full defeat. Keith has never been anything but a perfect storm. 

“Shiro. . .”

And his voice is low and deep, reminding Shiro of molten chocolate and all the ways it could burn sweet across his tongue.

He takes a step forward, smiling like a wanted man who knows he’s gladly given it all up. No weapons, no further defense, nothing left to him in the face of all that Keith has become. Shiro knows that these are the moments that morph into memories recalled with aching clarity, the ones that could sing a man into eternal sleep. A sight he won’t ever forget. 

This time, he reaches up and hooks his fingers along the waistband of Keith’s pants, tugging him a little closer as he takes one last step forward.

“You look. . .” Shiro murmurs, as Keith leans into him, bringing their lips close but not close enough,” . . .you look amazing.”

Lips brush against his, Keith’s eyes burning bright with promise as they meet his gaze. “Shiro?” 

“Yes?”

The corner of Keith’s mouth curves a little sharper. “Shut up and start touching me.”

Laughter comes in a short huff over his lips, just a bit incredulous. And as he dips his head, lips parting, Shiro whispers his reply in the moment he has before kissing Keith.

“Yes, sir. . .”

His hand slides beneath the waist of Keith’s pants, fingertips drifting low along groin, across thigh, and settling finally for the curve of Keith’s ass. Shiro brings his other hand around in similar fashion until both palms are planted firmly against skin and pushing Keith in closer. 

Keith moans softly against his lips, causing Shiro’s fingers to dig in at the sound. A roll of his hips has Keith cursing quietly next, and it sounds more like a hymn than any sort of damning confession, his voice rough with want, his lips wet with desire. And when Shiro kisses Keith again, with his name falling into the space where they meet, he believes there has never been a better place to find salvation. 

“You’re hard,” Keith mumbles, slipping his hand between them to rub at Shiro’s cock. 

“Do you have any idea,” Shiro grinds out around a moan, “how you looked standing there?”

A blush spreads over Keith’s cheeks, but there’s nothing of shame to the act, none of it blazing in his eyes. And Shiro knows why it had burst into existence seconds later when Keith’s voice settles warm against his lips. 

“Fuckable?” 

Just one word. _One word_ , and Shiro feels something dig sharply into his chest, cutting him open and letting all the air in his lungs escape. He breathes out harshly against the corner of Keith’s mouth.

“Very. . .”

Keith is smiling then like Shiro had just offered him the entirety of the world, and maybe he had. Wide, bright, just a bit fevered. A simple acknowledgment of desire, of a want that had shown itself undeniable seconds before but confirmed with a single word. Shiro leans back in then, kissing Keith, soft and reverent. His hands drift up to settle along lower back, fingers spread out as if trying to encompass all they possibly could of the body within their grasp. 

And it could have been a whole universe, for all that Shiro feels is standing before him. Something entirely of their own making.

Keith’s body curves up against his again, and this time, Shiro nearly groans as Keith’s erection grinds against his own. His right hand slips, pulling at the edge of Keith’s sweatpants, tugging them low over the curve of his ass. Another roll of hips comes in frank reward for his boldness, sound sputtering out over his tongue as Keith leans into him again, putting a soul-shattering depth into their next kiss.

And Shiro is certain the world had gone black as a starless night in those few seconds, every bit of him forsaken, lost to every ounce of Keith. 

Reaching down, Keith finishes the job Shiro had started, pulling off his sweatpants and revealing what Shiro’s hands had already told him was truth – there is nothing, absolutely nothing more, underneath. A thought reestablished that puts this coiling ache in his core, growing tighter and tighter until Shiro finds himself panting against Keith’s shoulder, undone by a simple thought. His hands roam, cautious, over Keith’s skin. They course low along the backs of his thighs, rise again to hips, seek the expanse of his stomach between them. And for every inch explored, Shiro hears the breath turn ragged as it spills over Keith’s lips. 

A circle of thumb over the jut of hip bone, followed by the press of lips to the point of Keith’s shoulder. Index finger glides low over his abdomen. Mouth settles along collarbone and strings a line of kisses down to the center of Keith’s chest. Fingertips outline a rib. Tongue smoothes over a nipple. 

For every touch, a kiss, as Shiro plots his way across Keith’s torso.

And as he works, marking skin with waypoints to guide him, Keith has his hands in Shiro’s hair, slowly running fingers through it. When a touch stills Keith’s breath, Shiro finds it echoed in the way Keith’s fingers halt entirely, and as the air comes back rushing back into him, so to does the movements of his hand. 

Shiro sinks to his knees, placing one last kiss against Keith’s right hip. Only then does he look up, taking Keith’s hand in his and slowly turning it to expose the notes tattooed across the skin there. Above him, Keith’s lips are parted, his gaze scalding as liquid fire. His chest rises and falls - short, shallow bursts of breath, each full of expectation. Shiro finds himself smiling at the sight of it all, that curve of his mouth lingering as he settles his lips against the underside of Keith’s wrist.

Keith inhales sharply. He closes his eyes, brow furrowing, with the slightest shake of his head. And Shiro can see the torment play out across his features, the way his mouth pulls tight only to be broken by a smile. When Keith speaks, his voice trembles, this quiet confession cracking under the weight of his emotions, held silent for God only knew how many years. 

“I love you, Shiro.” 

And Shiro thinks there has never been anything more beautiful in his whole life, and it cuts right down into the soul of him, sure to scar him forever, this little bit of Keith that has come to be his. He says nothing in the wake of those words, only rises to his feet, curling his hand around Keith’s and pulling it to his heart as he leans in and kisses him, as deep as those words had been true. 

“I have been yours. . .” Shiro murmurs, setting Keith’s palm flat over the space of his heart, which is beating ruthlessly within his chest, “. . .for a very long time now.”

Keith nods, a bare movement of his head then kisses Shiro again as his fingers curl in against Shiro’s skin. Seconds later, he’s stepping back, cheeks fired up red once more, only to drop down to the mattress. A single glance is all Shiro needs to be reminded of everything else Want would have of them, his cock throbbing with an exquisite sort of pain at the sight of Keith, hard and waiting on the bed. He catches the glance Keith throws towards his nightstand, and with one eyebrow raised in silent question, steps over to pull open the drawer. Beneath a stack of music sheets and several of Keith’s favorite wrist cuffs, he finds two boxes of condoms and a bottle of lube. 

The arch of his eyebrow is still present when he turns to Keith, whose blush has decided to flare darker still.

“Lance would. . .” Keith starts, fingers curling around a fistful of bedsheet, “. . .always give them to me. Something about having to be prepared. . .”

Shiro finds himself laughing, even as the blush coats his own cheeks. He drops one box and the bottle to the bed beside Keith, sliding into the space between Keith’s legs with one knee digging into the mattress, his hands pressing heavy on either side of Keith’s body. Another kiss is pulled from Keith’s lips, light and easy as plucking an apple from a tree. 

“What are friends for, right?” he teases.

Keith nips at his lower lip. Shiro growls low in its wake, feeling something burn its way right up his spine, putting fire to his thoughts. He reaches down, curling his fingers around Keith’s cock, and slowly pumps down the length of it, drawing the softest whine from Keith’s lips. And Shiro can’t help but be quietly amazed by the difference, of how imagination once again has failed him. The head of Keith’s cock is already slick, and he runs his thumb across it, coating down the underside of the shaft. 

It’s not until Keith moans again that Shiro realizes he had been the one panting, captivated by the way Keith’s head had dropped back, his mouth open, hair trailing over his skin, his throat completely exposed. 

Never had anything been so marvelously crafted. Undone and waiting for the inevitable end. 

Keith spills over his stomach a minute later, fingers clenching around the sheets and Shiro’s name breathless on his lips. He collapses down to the mattress, flat on his back, a hand brought up and placed across his eyes. Shiro takes in the sight with a smile, still feeling the ache of his own erection confined within his sweatpants, thinking he could easily come over the image Keith makes of himself at that moment. 

Instead, he reaches up, running index and middle finger through the cooling strands of milky-white drizzled across Keith’s stomach. Keith glances down at him just as Shiro’s tongue flicks across his fingertips.

“Shiro. . .” Keith murmurs, his voice husky with satisfaction, and just a touch curious. 

He offers a smile, just a bit strained, in return as he climbs up along the length of Keith’s body. And he's reminded that with every inch he crawls forward that he wants nothing more than to empty himself of every desire, whether that be across Keith’s chest or deep inside of him. He huffs out as he leans down, trying not to groan as his cock rubs against the fabric straining against it.

“You taste – “

But there’s no finishing that, no when Keith’s mouth is against his, lips parted and tongue darting out to slide against his own. Shiro gives himself over to the moan that threatens, pulled from his throat and resonating within their kiss. Fingers are in his hair again, against his skull and pressing him down further, and Shiro can still taste the salt upon his tongue, every bit of it defined only as Keith.

He pulls back seconds later, eyes shutting as he tries to block out the ache coiling up from his core with increasingly insistent need. It’s only when he feels the cool plastic of the bottle pressed against his chest that he looks down, finding Keith first, the lube second. Keith shifts his hips a little, spreading his legs apart, and doing nothing to help ease the pain telling Shiro to let it all go. 

Teeth dig into his lower lip. Keith presses a kiss to his forehead. 

“Your turn, Shiro. . .”

And the laugh that takes him is heavy with amusement, stained dark and desirous. Keith will be the end of him yet, of that Shiro is certain. 

But he moves regardless, steeling himself with a harsh inhale as he slides lower and puts the first bit of lube across his fingers. 

“Have you done this before?” Shiro asks against the inside of Keith’s left thigh, distracting himself with the lazy, self-satisfying kiss he places there. His index finger slides in between Keith’s cheeks, wetting puckered flesh before pushing in, slow and careful.

Above him, Keith whimpers softly. After a moment - “A little. . .some. . .when I. . .”

Silence cuts in just as Keith tightens around his finger. Shiro sets teeth light against skin, closer to the juncture of Keith’s hip, which has Keith hissing harshly in reply. 

“When you. . .?” Shiro coaxes, pressing his finger in deeper, then pulling it back with deliberate hesitation. 

“When I. . .” Keith mumbles. “. . .fuck, Shiro, when I thought about you!”

And it comes out sharp with embarrassment, eclipsed by the soft moan that follows in its wake. A little more lube and Shiro is adding his middle finger alongside his other one. 

“You thought of me. . .” Shiro muses, not certain if he’s grateful for the distraction or about to find himself impossibly damned by the images it’s starting to conjure, as wicked and intoxicating as a witch's midnight brew. 

“Yeah.” Quiet confirmation. Shiro’s fingers slide in and out, with each pass finding more and more give to the flesh around them. “I would always. . .think about. . .it. And how you played the piano. . .what it would be like to. . .have your hands on me. . .just like that. . .”

Shiro’s breath shatters in his lungs at those words, putting a different sort of ache into the mix, all of it swirling together in some wretchedly pleasant solution of desire as it exists on every varied level of being. Because there is more than one way to want, to love, and Keith seems to strike a match for each one of them deep inside of Shiro. 

The third finger has Keith arching slightly, body tightening around all three as another hiss slides out low and mean across his lips. The slightest gloss of pain to it. Shiro slows his rhythm to a crawl, waiting until Keith begins to relax before moving in further. 

Another kiss to thigh, and this time, laughter trails out softly along with it.

“You know. . .you weren’t exactly as quiet as you thought. . .”

Keith tenses around his fingers again, and this time the groan that parts his lips is spun from pure embarrassment. 

Shiro smiles against skin, his gaze drifting up to meet Keith’s, thoroughly unapologetic. “Can’t say they were the worst sounds to get off to. . .”

Red cuts across Keith’s cheeks quick as a lit fuse. He drops his head back to the mattress, muttering at Shiro to shut up, his body relaxing suddenly in the wake of his words. Shiro presses his fingers in deeper, working them in and out in a steady rhythm now. When Keith starts to arch into it, hips riding down, Shiro finally pulls his fingers free and slides back from the mattress.

His feet hit the floor, the wood cool beneath them and sending the smallest jolt through his body. Fingers hook into the waistband of his sweatpants, but it’s only when Keith rises up onto his elbows and set his gaze upon him that Shiro strips himself clean. His cock aches, standing hard and flush in full view. He wants to reach down, to stroke himself off to the sight of Keith there on the bed, but Keith is reaching for the condoms, his eyes burning bright as a halo and all its promise of redemption, and the only thing Shiro can think of doing is complying with Keith’s every desire. 

As he moves to climb back between Keith’s legs, he’s greeted with a shake of Keith’s head and a look that directs him towards the headboard of the bed. Shiro glances over, and after a moment of consideration seats himself against it instead, pillow tucked behind him. Keith tears open the condom, pinches the tip and leans over to start rolling it down the length of Shiro’s erection. Shiro feels his hand spasm over the sheets, fingers clenching down over the edge of the pillow as Keith's fingers circle around the base of his cock. The fact that he doesn’t come then and there is something of a small miracle. 

“How do you. . .?”

But Shiro gets his answer when Keith straddles him next. He’s half-erect again, the tip of his cock brushing against Shiro’s chest. When their eyes meet, there is nothing of trepidation lurking inside of Keith’s. Only a steady heat burning, on and on, and Shiro remembers there are trials by fire that can make and remake a man, purifying, refining every ounce of him.

Thinks of how gladly he would burn in all of what Keith is. 

His hands set light upon hips, slowly slide around to cup each cheek and as Keith starts to lower himself down, fingers spread them apart just until he can feel the tip of his cock pressing inside. Shiro watches as lips twist, as Keith’s chest stills with held breath. Keith’s right hand settles flat, weighted as it anchors itself, against Shiro’s chest; his left steadies against Shiro’s hip, barely moored. He sinks a bit lower, and Shiro has to grit his teeth as heat fully envelops the head of his cock. 

Keith’s brow furrows sharply, the breath cutting harsh across his lips. 

Shiro leans in, feeling the heavy press of Keith’s hand over his chest, and defying that, places his mouth against Keith’s to pull a slow, soothing kiss from his lips. A hard rush of air comes out as Keith drops his hips again. 

“I love you,” Shiro whispers, as much a balm as the kiss previous had been. The words ache on his tongue, stirring something deep within his heart. He murmurs them again as he kisses Keith once more, and this time, he feels the hand against his chest relax, elbow giving way just slightly. 

Another inch lower. Another shuddering exhale. The look on Keith’s face is an exquisite mix of physical pain and the pleasure derived from Shiro’s words, with the smallest spill of a smile over lips, just a bit strained in its making. 

When he takes the last of Shiro’s cock inside of him, Shiro moves his hands to Keith’s hips and holds him steady there.

“Wait,” he murmurs. A request, as much for himself as for Keith. 

Warmth closes in around him, tight and soul-stealing. The slightest bit of movement and he just might be entirely gone. His mouth finds Keith’s neck, lips trailing light as they descend until he sets them against skin with purpose, pulling a small bruise to the surface just above Keith’s collarbone. 

And then, Keith moves. A single pulse of it, right in time with his heartbeat. Another follows, then another. Shiro exhales, breath trembling as his core clenches tight. His hands start to move in response, gliding up and down Keith’s hips in time to his rocking, each beat growing longer and longer, until Keith is sliding along the length of his cock almost in full. Stopping just enough to leave the tip buried comfortably, then dropping back down. And with each pass, Shiro watches as Keith’s expression begins to relax, losing that edge of pain and allowing more of pleasure to infiltrate it until lips part and his breath spills shallow, laced with a quiet moan. 

The perfect image of coming undone.

It doesn’t take much of that to push Shiro into oblivion. His head falls back against the headboard, the image of Keith full before him until even that is burned out of existence, the whole world sparking bright as every bit of salvation ever promised to a man. 

Shiro comes back to fingertips gliding across his cheeks, palms settling in against them next, and Keith’s mouth light upon his. And there is nothing he can do to help the smile that takes his mouth, spurred wider still by the laugh that comes over Keith and spills out warm against him. Shiro brings his hands up, cupping Keith’s neck, and finally sinks into the kiss that had been started, letting every ounce of breathless wonderment steep into the act.

Keith’s left hand slips away, fingertips finding Shiro’s right wrist, and tracing along the scars that line his arm. Driven by memory alone. 

“When everything happened,” Keith starts, pausing to recover a bit more of his breath. And still, his fingers move, skating across his right bicep where the deepest of Shiro’s scars sits, a dark tribute to the devastation of a past life. “. . .I know they said things weren’t bad, and that you would heal fine but then your parents. . .and you just left. . .I didn’t know how bad was _bad_. I thought I had lost you.”

Shiro tips his head up to set his lips light against Keith’s forehead. Quiet as he listens in this space just for the two of them.

“. . .and then you were here again. And you weren’t the same. . .” Keith falls silent then. Shiro brushes his thumbs along Keith’s cheekbones, which draws Keith’s gaze right to his. “I knew you were fighting things, but I didn’t know what to do. . .I didn’t want to lose you again.”

“You won’t lose me,” Shiro replies, sudden as a summer’s gust and just as surprising, just as warm. 

Keith offers him a smile, full of acceptance. “Takashi. . .”

And the name puts a shiver right through the very center of him. Shiro feels his heart start winding up again, the breath held tightly in his lungs, and he wonders if anything else in this world could sound as stunning as his name dropping from Keith’s lips, like it had been waiting and waiting, just for that moment to be claimed

“Yes?” 

“Don’t fight alone anymore.” 

It could all be that simple. Really. And maybe it is.

“Yeah,” Shiro murmurs, relaxed, the curve that takes his lips ascendant. “Stay with me.”

There’s a pause, just long enough for a smirk to possess Keith’s mouth, for the amusement to flicker light in his eyes.

“I never left.”


End file.
